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Sunday-School Success 



By Amos R. Wells 



Sunday-School Success. A Book of Practical 

Methods for Sunday-School Teachers and 

Officers. i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 

Prof. Wells stands in the front rank of experts in the 

theory and practice of Sunday-school teaching. His 

contributions to The S. S. Times, The S. S. Journal ', 

The Pilgrim Teacher, The Westminster Teacher, The 

Baptist Teacher, and to other periodicals, including his 

own paper, The Golden Rule, command always the 

widest attention. His practical experience has been 

gained as a teacher in both Sunday and secular schools, 

where he has had opportunity to learn from his own 

failures and successes. 

When Thou Hast Shut Thy Door. Morning 
and Evening Meditations for a Month. 3d 
edition. Long i6mo, cloth, 50c, 
" These meditations are very helpful in that they con- 
centrate thought upon special spiritual relations." — The 
Christian Standard. 

Business. A Plain Talk with Men and Women 
who Work. i2mo, decorated boards, 50c. 
" Brief and plain. Packed full of suggestions."— The 

Evangelist. 

Social Evenings. A Collection of Entertainments. 
i6mo, cloth, net, 35c. 



Fleming H. Revell Company 

New York: 112 Fifth Ave. 
Chicago : 63 Washington St. 
Toronto : 154 Yonge St. 



Sunday-School Success 



A Book of Practical Methods 
for Sunday-School Teachers 
and Officers & & & 



By 



Amos R. Wells 

1 V 

Author of" Business," " When Thou Hast Shut Thy 
Door," " Social Evenings," etc. 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

Publishers of Evangelical Literature 



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Copyright, 1897, by 
Fleming H. Revell Company 



1Z-J&& 



The Library 

Ot CoNGIfESS 




WASHINGTON 



THE NEW YORK TYPE-SETTING COMPANY 



THE CAXTON PRESS 



Preface 

In these pages I have described the methods of 
the most successful teachers and Sunday-schools I 
have known. While a large part of the book is the 
direct fruit of my own experience in Sabbath and 
secular schools, it sets forth, as every teacher will 
understand, what I have learned from my failures 
rather than from my successes. 

Though the volume has something to say on all 
the great Sunday-school problems, it does not pretend 
to be a complete manual ; indeed, who could prepare 
one on so stupendous a theme? If it justifies its ap- 
pearance among the admirable treatises already pub- 
lished for Sunday-school workers, it will be because 
it presents with frankness the methods found helpful 
by an average teacher, who never had charge of a 
large school or a large class, but in district school, 
small college, and small Sunday-school has struggled 
with the practical problems of a teacher, and in some 
of them at least, like Sentimental Tommy, has " found 
a way." 

A large number of these chapters have appeared 
5 



Preface 

in the "Sunday-school Times," and others in the 
" Sunday-school Journal " of the Methodists, the 
" Pilgrim Teacher " of the Congregationalists, the 
"Westminster Teacher" of the Presbyterians, the 
" Baptist Teacher," and the " Golden Rule." I am 
grateful to these periodicals for permission to include 
this material in my book. 

Amos R. Wells. 
Boston, September, 1897. 



Contents 



PAGE 

I. The Teacher's Crown 9 

II. Who Should Teach in the Sunday-School? 14 

III. Preparing the Lesson 21 

IV. Something about Teachers' Meetings . . 32 
V. A Teacher with a Schedule . . .39 

VI. My Lesson Chart 42 

VII. The Value of a Monotessaron . . .46 

VIII. Getting Attention 52 

IX. Keeping Attention 57 

X. The Importance of Questioning . . 64 

XI. A Good Question 69 

XII. Inspiring Questions 75 

XIII. Trigger-Teaching ..... 80 

XIV. Galvanic Teaching 85 

XV. Serial Teaching 89 

XVI. Teaching the Psalms 95 

XVII. Those Temperance and Missionary Lessons 104 

XVIII. Topical Lessons 114 

XIX. Introducing Thoughts . . . .119 
XX. Illustrations and Applications . . .125 
7 



Contents 

PAGE 

XXI. Righteous Padding . . . .130 

XXII. The Sunday-School and the Newspaper 134 

XXIII. On Taking Things for Granted . . 139 

XXIV. Utilizing the Late Scholar. . . 143 
XXV. Side-Tracking the Teacher . . . 146 

XXVI. The Problem of the Visitor . .150 

XXVII. "Under Petticoat Government" . 154 

XXVIII. The Teacher's Three Graces . . 160 

XXIX. Something to Belong to . . .163 

XXX. Through Eye-Gate 167 

XXXI. Foundation Work 178 

XXXII. The Trial Balance 193 

XXXIII. At the Helm 201 

XXXIV. The Superintendent's Chance . . 209 
XXXV. The Sunday-School and the Weather 213 

XXXVI. A Profitable Picnic . . . .217 

XXXVII. A Singing Sunday-School . . .221 

XXXVIII. A Praying Sunday-School . . .227 

XXXIX. S. S. and C. E 233 

XL. Teachers in 8vo 241 

XLI. Around the Council Fire . . . 256 

XLII. The Incorporation of Ideas . . 267 

XLIII. From a Superintendent's Notebook . 272 

XLIV. From a Teacher's Notebook . . 287 



Sunday-School Success 

Chapter I 
The Teacher's Crown 

In one of those dreams which are truer than wak- 
ing there passed before me a long line of the Sun- 
day-school teachers I have known. One after the 
other they appeared — those that had taught my 
childish lips to repeat the Bible words, those that had 
led my youth into the opening glories of the Interna- 
tional Lessons, those that had put to rest the rising 
doubts of the young man and clinched his faith to 
the Rock of ages ; those, also, of less blessed mem- 
ory, whom I knew in early or later years, that had 
done none of these things, but other good things not 
so good. 

And I noted in astonishment, as each came into 

view, that all were decked with diverse crowns. I 

had not looked long before I saw that these crowns 

were not arbitrary and artificial, but sprung from the 

9 



Sunday-School Success 

very substance of the character of each. They had 
all received their reward, but according to their deeds. 

First came a teacher whom I remembered merely 
as an eloquent talker. His words were deftly chosen, 
his sentences smoothly formed. His teaching was a 
charming harangue, bright with metaphor, flashing 
with sparkling parables. I loved to listen to him. 
I was as proud of him as he was of himself. To be 
sure, the only good thing he ever did for me was to 
inspire in me the vain desire to become an equally 
eloquent talker, but yet I was sorry he had not re- 
ceived a nicer crown. It looked very beautiful, as 
if it were thickly studded with lovely pearls richly 
iridescent in the sun ; but when he came near I saw 
that each pearl was a little bubble swollen from a 
reservoir within. These bubbles were bursting all 
over the crown, fresh ones ever taking their place. 
It was a very pretty sight, yet a very trivial crown, 
and I was sorry for him. 

There were several worthy teachers in the line 
whom I remembered as careful instructors in Bible 
history. They had every date at tongue's end, knew 
the order of the books and their contents, the rela- 
tionships of the prominent characters to each other, 
all details of place and customs. They could repeat 
Bible verses by the yard, and gave prizes for such 
feats of unreasonin g memory. They were m echanical, 
but thorough and useful. They had taught me how 
to dig into the Bible and study it as hard as I would 
study calculus. I was grateful to them for this, 



The Teacher's Crown 

though they did no more, and so was rather sorry to 
observe their frail crowns. They were all of paper, 
neatly folded and plaited, and as I came nearer I saw 
that each crown was made up of leaves of the Bible. 

I saw there also two or three teachers who had 
always taught with a sad countenance, teaching, not 
because they loved to teach, but because it was their 
duty to. " These," I thought, " will be joyful, now 
that their distasteful task is over and their reward has 
come " ; but when I could see their faces clearly they 
looked mournful as ever. Their crowns were ebon 
black, pointed with little urns and lined with crape, 
and they often shifted them, pressing their hands 
gloomily to their brows, as if the crowns were very 
ill fitting and uncomfortable. They wore them with 
a martyr's air. 

There were several teachers whom I remembered 
with gratitude because they had been so careful, in 
teaching, to emphasize always the fundamental doc- 
trines of Christianity. These doctrines were the warp 
and woof of the solid fabric of their lessons. Over 
and over, in the same set phrases, they pressed those 
great truths, until, strive as one would, one could 
never forget them. But they never taught me the 
relation between these blessed doctrines and my own 
life. For years the formulas they had taught me re- 
mained for me mere words. And so I was not at 
all surprised to find their symbolic crowns solid and 
rich, but not attractive, for they were thickly set with 
jewels in the rough. Here and there, from beneath 



Sunday-School Success 

the incrusting" stone, some magnificent gem would 
flash out, 'but the beauty and splendor of most of 
them were hidden. 

In my fantastic dream I saw another, who had 
been a good teacher and a very poor one by turns. 
His piety and zeal were subject to great fluctuations, 
and a Sunday's teaching from him, carefully thought 
out, full of wise helpfulness, would be followed by a 
fortnight or more of questions read out of a question- 
book, lifeless and mechanical. I was prepared, 
therefore, to understand the meaning of his crown, 
which bore many beautiful gems, but these gems 
gave intermittent light, flashing out for a moment 
with most brilliant hues, then suddenly growing dull 
and dark. 

One alone of all I saw in my strange dream wore 
a looking-glass crown. He had done his Sunday- 
school teaching, I had always feared, for the praise 
of men, to be seen of them. His attitude, his pom- 
pous words and gestures, irresistibly suggested to 
me always the posturing of an actor before a looking- 
glass. And so his crown was all a mirror — clear, 
bright, beautiful, but mirroring a looking-glass soul. 

And now, closing the long procession, who are 
these I see? A thrice-blessed band, to me ever 
sacred. There is the cheery little matron whose brisk 
kindliness gave charm to my introduction into Sun- 
day-school life. There is the quiet and low-voiced 
lady whose gentle teachings carried me many a step 
toward my Saviour. There is the thoughtful and 



The Teacher's Crown 

saintly woman whose prayers for the school-boy went 
up, I know, night and morning ; whose urgings were 
so earnest, brave, and wise. And there is the noble- 
hearted man, familiar with a young collegian's per- 
plexities, sympathetic as a woman, trustful as a hero, 
strong and uplifting in word and friendly deed. I 
see them all, and from their glorified heads a wonder 
shining, a crown of light, beautiful as the love-gleam 
from a mother's eye. And every one of the crowd- 
ing star-points of those crowns is for a life won to 
the happy service of the Master. 

As I gazed with tear-dimmed eyes at the dear 
vision, an angel stood at my side and asked me, 
" What are all these thou hast seen? " " Forms," I 
answered, " of Christ's teachers I have met ; of my 
own teachers, these last, all crowned as they have 
taught." "Yes," answered the angel, "but you have 
seen more than that. You have seen among them 
the crown you yourself will wear when your teach- 
ing days are over. Which shall it be? " 



13 



Chapter II 
Who Should Teach in the Sunday-School? 

The Master, who loves little children, stood in the 
Sunday-school door and cried to all that came up, 
"Who will teach my children about me?" And 
they all with one consent began to make excuse. 

The preacher passing by said with conviction, " I 
have my sermons to preach, and Sunday-school work 
distracts my thought from them." Then answered 
the Master : " Crucify your pride in words, and seek 
the glory of deeds. This is your true sermon, to 
bring me close to human hearts. Thus did I most 
gladly preach, when on earth, to small classes and not 
to throngs. Thus should my ministers most gladly 
preach, face to face, one to half a dozen. You have 
many pulpits more effective than the elegantly fur- 
nished one to which you mount by three steps. They 
are the bedside, the wayside, the prayer-meeting 
table, the Sunday-school chair. Lovest thou me? 
Feed my lambs." 

The teacher, when invited, shook his head with a 
14 



Who Should Teach in the Sunday-School ? 

sigh. " I teach all the week, and I am so tired ! 
Why should I not rest on Sunday? " Then answered 
the Master: "The truest rest is a little change in 
work. Your Sunday-school and day-school will in- 
vigorate each other. It is I who have given you the 
sweet power of leading young lives. Should you not 
use it in leading them to me? Have you not seen 
how teaching your scholars in holy things the first day 
of the week draws them closer to you in your secular 
teaching of the other days? Do you not rejoice in 
the opportunity this work gives you to get an insight 
into your scholars' characters and mold them more 
directly than by the roundabout route of grammar 
and geography? Indeed, if I excuse any from my 
Sunday-school, you, to whom I have intrusted in 
especial measure the teaching gift, must not be 
the one." 

The business man rejected the proposal with em- 
phasis, saying : " As a matter of course, Sunday-school 
teaching is quite out of my line. My days are kept 
in close contact with dull matter, with cloth and coal 
and wood and iron. I have no time for books, ex- 
cept day-books and ledgers. My mechanical, routine 
business quite unfits me for religious teaching." To 
that the Master replied, smiling kindly : " I was a 
carpenter, my son, but holy thoughts kept pace with 
my plane, and firm conclusions were clinched with 
my hammer. And at evening, work done, I found 
time for prayer and meditation and calling young 
children about me to talk with them. Your contact 
15 



v 

* 'Sunday-School Success 

with men and things makes you one of the most 
valuable of Sunday-school teachers. What parables 
are acted all around you, in nature, in your work, in 
the lives of your helpers! What illustrations lie 
heaped up in your business experience, ready to your 
hand! Most of these young people in my Sunday- 
school will choose some business like yours. How 
happy for them, then, if they could have you to tell 
them beforehand of its perils, strengthen them for its 
difficulties, point them the road to success and true 
happiness! No; I can better miss preacher and 
teacher from my Sunday-school than you men of 
affairs." 

Then came the care-worn housewife. " Master," 
said she, " I am perplexed and troubled about many 
things. My days, and often my nights, are crowded 
with a woman's myriad unheralded tasks. The 
children are ever with me. Why need I go to Sun- 
day-school to teach them? Why not each home the 
mother's Sunday-school?" "Why not each home 
the prayer-meeting? " the Master asked her. " There 
come from numbers an interest, a help and inspira- 
tion, which you cannot get in the holiest family circle, 
and which you dare not miss. And what of the little 
ones whose mothers are less faithful than you? Have 
you no love to spare for them ? I have implanted in 
the very nature of you mothers my most earnest call 
to Sunday-school teaching. What is it? The great- 
est love of little children." 

And then came up two young people, a youth and 
16 



Who Should Teach in the Sunday-School? 

a maiden, and said to the Master: "We are too 
young. We have had as yet no wonderful experience. 
We know nothing of death, of disease, of great sor- 
rows, of heavy responsibilities. We are not wise in 
these high matters. We do not understand theology. 
We cannot teach." " Why," answered the Master, 
" neither do my little ones in the Sunday-school want 
to know about death or disease or heavy responsi- 
bilities. I would not have them taught what you 
think of as theology. But you are wiser than they. 
You see beyond their little worries and mysteries. 
Help them to your own measure of grace and strength, 
and as you teach and they grow, will not you grow, 
too, for further teaching ever? No, my young man 
and maid, with your ardent and fresh-hearted zeal ; 
you can come very close to my little children, and I 
cannot spare you from my Sunday-school." 

Long stood the Master there by the door of the 
Sunday-school, and many were those whom he called 
to the work, and many excuses were made. One 
pleaded ignorance. " But," gently questioned the 
Master, "have you a mind, to learn? " One urged 
timidity. " But I will be with you," said the Master. 
" There are others who can do it better," insisted one. 
"Will you not get them to do it, then? " begged the 
Master. " And if they will not do it, then you will 
be the best, and cannot refuse." 

It was not long before a strong little group stood 
by the Master's side, ready for service, and as the 
regular teachers of the school came up, the Lord of 
i7 



Sunday-School Success 

whom they taught received them lovingly, or sadly 
turned them back. As hard-faced, unsympathetic 
Mr. Grim would enter— he whom all the children fear 
and elders do not love ; he to whom a boy is only the 
necessary inconvenient early stage of a man, of prom- 
ise only as he can commit to memory Bible verses— 
when he would enter the Master turned him back. 
" You must not teach my children," said the blessed 
One, " until you become as a little child." 

He barred out also Mr. Brainy, whose ideal recita- 
tion is an argument, and whose scholars are far more 
familiar with points of skeptical controversy than 
with the Bible. He would not admit Miss Tangent, 
whose sole preparation for the lesson is the culling 
from her book of extracts of choice sentiments, pretty 
fables, and striking bits of verse of mysterious rele- 
vancy, which she recites for her scholars' admiration, 
and makes them learn. He turned back also Mrs. 
Scold, with her sharp tongue and cold eyes. He 
rejected Mrs. Job, who taught only from a sense of 
duty, and only with a long face. 

But ah, the warm smile, the eager greeting, with 
which the Master welcomed the school's workers! 
There was Jack Manly, who had not waited for the 
desire to begin teaching, but had seen the need and 
filled it, not knowing how soon and largely the love 
for the work would come and grow. There was Lucy 
Gentle, who did not feel able to teach, yet considered, 
not her ability, but the need, knowing that duty is 
measured rather by the seeing eye than by the feeble 
18 



Who Should Teach in the Sunday-School ? 

hand. There was Mrs. Patient, who had hesitated 
to begin the work because of her ignorance of the 
Bible, but who by quiet and faithful study for her 
class had become a wise and thorough scholar of the 
Word. There was old Squire Greatheart, who taught 
a group of full-grown men and women whom he had 
gathered into a class when they were boys and 
girls, and had led ever since in hard study of God's 
Book. 

There were many others whom the Master received, 
of many varied talents, for the Sunday-school can 
use a wide range of powers ; but all were alike in 
consciousness of their weakness compared with the 
greatness of their task, in willingness to resign their 
work to any better able who could be got to take it, 
in gladness to go on with it if their betters would not 
assume it, relying for success on the God of it. Their 
credentials were that they saw the need of the work, 
that they saw their own unfitness to do it, that they 
knew their fitness and power were assured when God 
assigned the task. 

Thus the Master chose his teachers and blessed 
them ; and though there was no genius there, no mighty 
mind, no trained skill, but only humble readiness to 
serve, he poured out on them the fullness of his love 
and power, and they left the Sunday-school room 
ever bearing precious sheaves. 

That is the end of my parable. Oh that all might 
know, as we, dear fellow-teachers, know it, the joy of 
our Sunday-school ministry! Then superintendents 



Sunday-School Success 

would have no search to find teachers, no trouble to 
keep them. Then to the enlarging band of teachers 
would come a constantly enlarging band of scholars, 
and all together would soon bring the multitudes of 
the world into the host of the redeemed. 



20 



Chapter III 
Preparing the Lesson 

Some teachers think that preparing the lesson is 
merely the loading of a cannon with powder, that it 
may go off with a big bang in the presence of ad- 
miring scholars. And the more powder, the bigger 
bang. So they load up with scintillating similes, and 
pretty parables, and striking stories. 

Other teachers have set up some historical or 
theological or ethical target-board off at a distance 
from their class, and load their cannon with ball, that 
their scholars may see how accurate is their aim and 
how fairly they can hit the bull's-eye. So they prepare 
a mass of facts and figures, arguments and evidences. 

But the wise teacher rejects in toto the cannon no- 
tion. He sees in each lesson a ledge of that grand 
mountain of life — of Christ- serving, strong life— up 
to which he must lead his little band, on which he 
must plant their feet so firmly that they may not slip 
back during the six days' interval, but may be ready 
for the next fair terrace, and the next. 



Sunday-School Success 

So the wise teacher, in preparing the lesson, knows 
that he must first reach that ledge himself ; must re- 
peat the journey over and over until he has learned 
the easiest way for little feet ; must make ladders with 
rounds close together ; must spread sand on slippery 
places and stretch ropes along the edge of the cliff. 
He, too, lays in supplies of stories and pretty parables, 
not, however, in the form of powder, to make a show, 
but (if this is not too severe a twist of the simile) as 
dainty food to keep the young travelers fresh and 
hearty. He, too, has facts and figures and arguments 
and evidences, not, however, as cannon-balls, but in 
the shape of iron bridges and railings and ropes, that 
the way may be solid and safe. 

There are some teachers that do not study at all. 
It is as if a will-o'-the-wisp should undertake to guide 
one on an important journey. Those teachers are 
going they know not whither, over they know not 
what road, for what purpose they have not the slight- 
est idea, and land always in a bog. 

Emphatically, the teacher that is not always climb- 
ing himself will leave his class on a very dead level 
indeed. He should be reaching down and pulling 
them up, but he is soon compelled to stand where 
they are and push, and ends with believing his " level 
best " to lie along the smooth road of the easy-going 
valley. 

The teacher who ceases to grow ceases to teach. 
That is why a Sunday-school lesson cannot be 
crammed. That is why preparation for it must ex- 



Preparing the Lesson 

tend all through the week. Growth cannot be ordered 
offhand. It comes from Father Time's shop, and 
he is a deliberate workman. You will lose your hold 
on your class if each Sunday hour does not begin 
with you a little above them, and end with them at 
your level. This advance cannot be won Saturday 
night, or during the space between the first and sec- 
ond bells for Sunday-school. Such a spasmodic leap 
ahead will leave you too much out of breath even to 
tell them to come on. 

Dropping metaphor, of which we may have had 
too much, there are several substantial reasons why 
the Sunday-school preparation should extend over the 
seven days of the week. Thus only can you utilize 
in the Master's work odd bits of time, your Bible on 
the bureau while you dress, in your hands on the 
street-cars or while you wait for the meat to be cooked. 
There are many Bible verses which should be carefully 
committed to memory in connection with each lesson, 
as the teacher's best reliance for commentary and in- 
spiration. These verses should be running through 
our heads as we run on all our six-day tasks, and 
should sing themselves to all our labor-tunes. But 
chiefly, it is only in this way that we can accumulate 
hints, and grow into the truths of the lesson by ex- 
perience. With the lesson theme for a nucleus, it is 
astounding to see what a wealth of illustration, of 
wise and helpful comment, each day's living thrusts 
upon us. Every event is a picture of some truth which 
needs only a sensitive plate to be photographed forever. 
23 



Sunday-School Success 

That sensitive plate is a mind which is studying that 
particular truth. 

How much time do you spend in studying your 
Sunday-school lesson? You see that no true teacher 
can answer that question, any more than the poet can 
tell how long he is in writing his poem. This is the 
inspirational part of the teacher's work, and not the 
mechanical part, and his brooding will have issue of 
life just in proportion as the Holy Spirit dwells in his 
heart. But along with this lofty work must go lower 
processes, of which it is far easier to speak. I mean 
those lower processes which alone we are likely to call 
"studying." Permit me to lay down a programme 
for the study of a Sunday-school lesson. 

To begin with, let it be always with pencil in hand. 
You have seen iron filings scattered in rough confusion 
over a sheet of glass. And then, when the magnet 
was placed beneath, you have seen those ugly bits 
of metal dance into the daintiest designs, fairy curves 
and most symmetrical figures. Such a delightful 
magnet is a pencil or a pen for all the disordered 
thoughts and fancies of our brains. Next to the Bible, 
the Sunday-school teacher's inseparable companion 
should be a lead-pencil. 

What book is nearest you while you study your 
lesson? Teachers may be classified finally by their 
answers to that question. Is it the commentary, 
the atlas, the Bible dictionary, the concordance, the 
question-book, or the Bible? If the commentary, 
your comments will fall fruitless to the ground. If 
24 



Preparing the Lesson 

the atlas, your class will wander nowhither. If the 
Bible dictionary, your diction will have no issue in 
deed. If the concordance, your class will know little 
from you of that concord which passes understanding. 
If the question-book, the value of all your study is 
at least questionable. No ; let me emphasize this 
statement : Not a single lesson help should be touched 
until everything possible to be learned about the lesson 
from the Bible directly has been learned. 

For this you will need two Bibles at least, one to 
be kept open at the lesson, one to turn back and forth 
in pursuit of references and information. The first 
must be a King James reference Bible ; the second, the 
noble translation of Victoria's reign. Thus furnished, 
read the lesson. As you read, examine your mind. 
What questions assail it? Those moments are full 
of matter. Those questions are the clues to the les- 
son labyrinth. Those perplexities constitute your pro- 
gramme. " I wonder where this place is? " you will 
say to yourself. " Who was this man, and what was 
his past history, that he did this deed? What does 
this odd phrase mean? Is that sentiment a just one? 
Is that act a model for us modern folk? " 

As these difficulties come up in your slow and 
thoughtful reading, jot them down, and the resultant 
half-sheet of scribbling means half the work accom- 
plished. But hold! Did you read through a child's 
eye as well as your own? Did you read in the plural 
number? If not, you must read the lesson once more, 
with a poet's imagination noting this time the diffi- 
25 



Sunday-School Success 

culties which you strode easily over, but which would 
soon trip up little feet. When you write down such 
points on your paper, underscore them. And under- 
score them again. A vast deal of preparation for 
teaching is fruitless because it is made in the singular 
number. 

The next stage in our lesson study will be to answer 
our questions. Points in regard to antecedents and 
motives will be answered by the chapters intervening 
between the last lesson and this. Those should next 
be read. Many difficulties concerning customs and 
laws will be cleared up by parallel passages and the 
references of your reference Bible. Those same ref- 
erences will collate for you helpful utterances on the 
ethical problems of the passage. Comparatively few 
people know, by the way, how nearly a reference Bible 
allows one to dispense with the Bible dictionary, Bible 
index, concordance, and commentary. I am contin- 
ually astonished to see how few are the questions 
which may be asked about a passage that the Bible 
itself does not answer if closely scrutinized. 

" But all this is a waste of time," you object. " In 
the lesson helps all of these points are stated and 
discussed, fully, methodically, concisely. Others 
have done this work for me, anticipating all my diffi- 
culties. Why need I repeat their labor? " Surely 
not merely to be original. There's too much original 
work crying to be done to waste a moment in dupli- 
cating unnecessarily work already done for us. But 
the Bible study cannot be done for you. It must 
26 



Preparing the Lesson 

end in familiarity with the Bible, in appreciation of 
it, in a wide-awake understanding of the problems it 
presents, to be obtained in no way except by original 
work. If difficulties are solved before we have felt 
them to be difficulties, if customs and phrases are ex- 
plained before we have discovered the need of an ex- 
planation, and places located before we fall to grop- 
ing after them, it is the old story of " light won, light 
lost." And so I wish to repeat that the one proper 
commencement of study of a Bible lesson is the Bible, 
and the Bible, and the Bible ; once to note our own 
questions, once to imagine our scholars' questions, 
and once, in large measure, here, there, and every- 
where, concordance, index, references, and atlas at 
our elbow, to answer, if it may be, from the Book itself 
all the questions it has raised. 

And when this is done, even if every question has 
been answered, open arms to the commentaries and 
the lesson helps, the wisest and richest you can find, 
and as many as you have time for. Why? Because 
twenty heads are better than one ; because the Hebrew 
and Greek and. travel and debate and experience and 
insight and spirituality of our best thinkers will sug- 
gest new points of view, add a world of illustration, 
may even upset some of your conclusions. Stand 
sturdily, however, in the presence of these learned 
doctors. You will be tempted to throw away your 
own honest results and adopt their wise and brilliant 
homilies. If you do, your class will laugh at you, or 
yawn. You will be giving them, not your life, but 
27 



Sunday-School Success 

your rhetoric. These helps are for inspiration, not 
respiration and circulation. They are for hints toward 
originality, not hindrances. They are useful in 
strengthening your own thought, vivifying your own 
feeling, confirming your own conclusions, opening 
new vistas for your own exploration, suggesting 
methods for your own practice. 

If these two lines of preparation have been faith- 
fully carried out, you will by this time have accu- 
mulated a mass of material which will be confusing, 
and the third step is to reduce it to order. Long 
practice has convinced me of the utility of the plan 
of writing out questions. Whether these questions 
are used in the class or not, they clarify the subject 
marvelously, and the mere drill of writing them adds 
fifty per cent, to the teaching power of the instructor. 
When I began trying it, I was astonished to see how 
many thoughts which seemed to me quite promising 
and bright could not be approached by the interrog- 
ative mood. I wanted to lead up to this simile, that 
illustration, this theory, that pretty idea. I would 
soon find that my questions refused to lead up to them 
naturally. Why? Simply because these fancies an- 
swered no query likely to rise, solved no difficulty likely 
to suggest itself, and were mere adventitious decora- 
tions wherewith I had been accustomed to load my 
Sunday-school teaching, to show off. 

My attempt at formulating questions soon taught 
me, too, that I had been indulging in monologue. I 
found it unexpectedly difficult to frame a question — 
28 



Preparing the Lesson 

one, that is, which required the scholar to do some 
thinking to answer. I discovered that I had been in 
the habit of propounding " yes " and " no " queries, 
merely as excuses for five-minute orations. 

Then, too, when I began to put down in black and 
white just what I expected to put into that precious 
half-hour, I wondered what I had been doing with it 
hitherto. By my previous methods two or three little 
notions would keep me going through the whole thirty 
minutes ; but ideas do shrink so when you put them 
on paper with a question-mark at the end! It is 
wonderful how many questions can be asked and 
answered in half an hour. I gained a new concep- 
tion of the value of time, and of the teaching value 
of study hours. 

In writing out these questions, then, the first thing 
to be thought of is that consideration with which a 
good teacher will begin his lesson, but a poor teacher 
will close : " What is the main teaching of the lesson? " 
— as important, this " main teaching," as the compass 
to the sailor. What particular characteristic of God's 
noblemen is this lesson to strengthen in my scholars? 
Every teacher should know the power which is given 
by an ultimatum ; by a decision, that is, as to the one 
thing which, no matter what else it wins or fails to 
win, that lesson must accomplish. Is it to make my 
boys and girls more truthful, more brave, more cheery, 
more trusting? Whatever the point be, about that 
shall cluster the questions, the illustrations, the argu- 
ments. Countries, customs, times, history, shall be 
29 



Sunday-School Success 

only its framework. There must be other points, to 
be sure, but merely as side excursions, from which 
we return with greater zeal to this our main quest. 
Those subordinate points we next determine, and the 
order in which we shall treat them, and then sit down 
to write out our questions. 

Does all this seem too mechanical, this writing out 
questions, and determining point by point just what 
results you will seek, and in what order? It is busi- 
nesslike ; it is mechanical. Why are we so afraid of 
mechanism in bringing hearts to the great Mechanic, 
without whom was nothing made that has been made? 
A machine is merely a contrivance for applying power 
effectively, and the only question should be, Does this 
machinery make my aim more direct, widen and 
deepen the range of my efforts? It is a grand and 
godlike thing to be mechanical, but it is a pitifully 
weak thing to stop with being mechanical. Machi- 
nery accomplishes all the work that is being done any- 
where, but it is machinery informed by the Holy Spirit. 
Our lesson preparation will be in harmony with all 
of God's preparing if it is orderly, painstaking, and 
definite, binding together, however, all its labored 
details with the sweet and creative spirit of prayer. 
Machinery touched by prayer is always the machi- 
nery in which, as in the old Greek plays, the god de- 
scends. Nothing is mechanical, everything is poeti- 
cal and spiritual, that can be prayed over. 

But will not all this take time— all this ransacking 
of the Bible, original study, writing out of questions, 
30 



Preparing the Lesson 

and formulating plans? Of course it will. Time is 
what good things are made of — time and toil. It 
would be strange if the best of good things, the sanc- 
tification of lives, did not take time and toil. But 
let us remember two facts : one, that this work, being 
thorough work, need not be done twice. Seven years 
of such Bible study as I have indicated, and what 
a magnificently trained teacher you will be, ready, 
all ready, for the next International Lesson cycle, the 
next Sunday-school Sabbath of years! We Sunday- 
school teachers have enlisted for life. It is so much 
wiser, then, to study for life. And in the second place, 
familiarity with this thoroughgoing way of working 
makes it much easier and more rapid than at first. 
We no longer have to use the concordance, but mem- 
ory supplies passages needed for illustration. Bible 
customs are soon learned. The peculiarities of Bible 
language are readily mastered. The poetic instinct 
which sees parables and applications grows with its 
use until they crowd upon you and must be critically 
culled. Nothing ends easy but that which begins 
hard. 

After all, however, these are the lower motives. 
What matters it even if the preparation for this blessed 
work remains hard to our last Sabbath? Let it be 
the best we know, and on that last Sabbath, if God 
has given us the knowledge that even one soul has 
been turned to the supreme happiness by all our toil, 
we shall deem it rich reward. 



31 



Chapter IV 
Something about Teachers' Meetings 

The teachers' meeting is not so much to get facts 
as to vivify and arrange them. The leader does not 
teach the lesson unless he teaches how to teach the 
lesson. This is a place for comparison. 

The meeting is perhaps less to make plans for the 
teachers than to stimulate them to make good plans 
for themselves. The gathering is not to listen to a 
lecture. You cannot make teachers, except by the 
Socratic method. A teachers' meeting is not a Bible 
class. 

The ideal teachers' meeting focuses on the work of 
each the helpfulness and skill of all. The leader, 
then, must put into the meeting every one's peculiar 
talent, and must draw out from the meeting for every 
one's peculiar need. And do not — as so many 
teachers' meetings do — let the teachers for the older 
classes run away with the evening. 

The right kind of teachers' meeting keeps itself up 
and keeps up the teachers. It "draws," because it 
32 



Something about Teachers' Meetings 

is attractive. The only way to build up an attendance 
is to build up the interest of the meeting to be at- 
tended. Nevertheless, attention to a few bits of de- 
tail will greatly assist in building up the attendance. 
Have a constitution, a full set of officers, and stated 
business meetings. Make the teachers feel that they 
" belong." Many a teachers' meeting goes to pieces 
for lack of something to tie to. Cultivate the feeling 
of responsibility. Insist on rotation in office. Give 
every teacher possible some regular duty, if only to 
pass the hymn-books. Once a year at least let the 
teachers' meeting have a field day. Get up its finest 
programme, with a special view to interesting the 
entire church in Sunday-school work. Then invite 
the entire church to hear it. Such an open meeting 
should come just before the beginning of a new line 
of study. 

The teachers' meeting, in many small places, will be 
a union meeting, of all the evangelical churches, and 
sometimes of neighboring churches in cities. What 
finer close to a year's harmonious w r ork than for all 
the teachers of this union meeting to sit down to 
dinner together at a genuine love-feast! 

Attendance is in many cases increased by provid- 
ing a variety of leaders. The brightest of men be- 
comes wearisome ere long ; his methods grow familiar. 
The heart of the teachers' meeting is the programme 
committee, ever pumping in fresh blood. Arrange 
with neighboring towns for the loan or exchange of 
helpful leaders. 

33 



Sunday-School Success 

There is a certain gain in a uniform programme 
for the hour, so that historical explanations, difficult 
exegesis, blackboard work, plans for the little folks, 
lesson analysis, and so on, may be taken up in a uni- 
form order each evening. This will insure against 
the omission of any line of work. 

Let one teacher — a new one for each quarter — be 
appointed to present within ten or fifteen minutes an 
outline of work for the younger classes. "If this 
teacher cannot draw, an assistant should be appointed 
who can. The remainder of the time, after these 
regular exercises are over, will be at the disposal of 
the leader of the evening, who will treat the lesson in 
general. Some such combination of permanent with 
changing leadership will be found exceedingly helpful 
and attractive. 

Who should lead the teachers' meeting? Teachers. 
Not exhorters ; not conversational monopolists ; not 
lecturers ; not the most learned doctor of divinity who 
is not also a teacher. None of these, but teachers. 
The obscure layman, if he knows how to ask wise 
questions. No one for compliment, no one for cus- 
tom, but every one for practical utility, for learning 
how to teach. 

See that the meeting begins on time, whether the 
leader is ready or not, and even if no audience is 
present. There will be an improvement next time. 
Promptness begets promptness. And let the meeting 
close on time, though in the midst of the most interest- 
ing discussion. All the better to leave a little interest 
34 



Something about Teachers' Meetings 

as a nest-egg. Open with prayer. Some teachers' 
meetings also open with singing. One verse is better 
than two. 

It is useful to read the lesson text in the meeting, 
provided the reading is made to teach something. 
The manner should be varied. Let the leader re- 
quest the teachers to take up the reading whenever he 
stops, and let him stop at eccentric places, to hold 
attention. Let the teachers read each verse in the 
King James Version, the leader responding with the 
Revision. In a passage where description or narra- 
tive alternates with speeches, let the leader read the 
speeches only, the audience inserting the narrative. 
Divide the lesson into sections that will analyze the 
thought or the story, and read these sections alter, 
nately, the leader prefacing each with a suggestive 
title. Divide the teachers into two portions, — right and 
left, front and back, — and let them read antiphonally. 
Let the leader read the entire lesson, injecting crisp 
comments carefully prepared beforehand, these com- 
ments being all in one line — exegetical, historical, ex- 
planatory of customs or of phrases. Let the leader 
prepare a set of questions, one to be answered by each 
verse, and to serve as an introduction to it as the 
teachers read. In studying the Gospels, whenever the 
lesson would be made clearer by it, read, instead of 
the regular text, the same passage as a monotessaron 
gives it, combined with all that is found in the other 
Gospels. Such ancient books as " The Teaching of 
the Twelve Apostles" or "The Apocryphal Gospel 
35 



Sunday-School Success 

of St. Peter " may often furnish a suggestive extract 
to add to this opening reading. 

The work of the teachers' meeting will largely be 
cut out for it at the outset, if the leader knows his busi- 
ness. Announce your programme, if you want help 
in carrying it out. What wonder the meeting runs 
off the leader's track, when the track is invisible to all 
but the leader ! " First," says the experienced teacher, 
"we'll form a scheme for our guidance in study; 
second, we'll go over the story of the lesson in a pre- 
liminary survey; third, we'll take up the words, 
phrases, customs, and circumstances that need ex- 
planation ; fourth, we'll discuss the best way of teach- 
ing the lesson to the younger scholars ; finally, we'll 
bring out points for the older members of the school." 

Many meetings fray out at the end. Nothing is 
finished, or at best there are only a few hasty answers 
to the stereotyped question, " Now what do you con- 
sider the chief teachings of this lesson? " If it has 
not been made evident before the meeting was half 
through what are the chief teachings of that lesson, it 
surely will not be made evident by this hurried ques- 
tion, whose answers are punctuated by the donning 
of overcoats. If the leader began with a good out- 
line, now is the time to clinch the discussions of the 
evening by repeating the outline, enlarged and modi- 
fied as those discussions may have required. Then 
let the evening be closed reverently with a few words 
of earnest prayer. 

As to the general conduct of the meeting, probably 
36 



Something about Teachers' Meetings 

the matter most necessary to be urged is the use of 
direct, brisk, suggestive questions, addressed, not to 
empty space, but to particular teachers. A question 
spread over a roomful is about as efficient as a bullet 
would be if fired flat enough to cover ten men. Don't 
be afraid to use proper names. Questions addressed 
to a crowd put a premium on forwardness. Call no 
one by name who is really too bashful to reply, but 
teachers ought to pass by that stage of timidity. 

A second common mistake is to run the teachers' 
meeting on the low plane of mere facts, history, biog- 
graphy, when it should be all aglow with the spiritual 
life. If the teachers' meeting does not touch the 
teachers' consciences, hardly will those teachers touch 
the consciences of their scholars. Let the leader ask 
at every turn this question in effect : " What need of 
your scholars' lives will this truth fit? " And he 
should not rest satisfied until the truth is applied in 
turn to the diverse needs of three classes — the little 
folks, the young folks, and the old folks. 

The leader must put himself in the place of all kinds 
of teachers, and discern their needs. He must head 
off unseemly and prolonged discussions ; he must have 
sprightliness to keep the meeting taut ; he must have 
zeal to keep the meeting warm ; he must have conse- 
cration to keep the meeting spiritual. 

But the best of leaders may be thwarted by poor 

following. To be led in a teachers' meeting is an art 

almost as difficult as to lead. A skilful follower in a 

teachers' meeting will answer questions briefly. He 

37 



Sunday-School Success 

will not commit the impertinence of giving ten times 
as much as is asked for from him, thus stealing from 
the meeting the sprightliness of nine questions and an- 
swers, even when all he says is to the point. He will 
make suggestive answers rather than exhaustive ones. 
His eager note-book and intelligent listening will be 
as encouraging as a continuous round of applause. 
In short, he will be anxious to do anything for the 
success of the meeting, even to the extent of sitting 
silent for fifteen minutes. And all leaders will bless 
him. 



33 



Chapter V 
A Teacher with a Schedule 

The weak point in the preparation most Sunday- 
school teachers make is their failure to prepare a 
schedule for their teaching— the order, that is, in 
which they shall take up and discuss the facts and 
lessons of the day's Scripture. Probably the majority 
of teachers begin with verse i and go stolidly through 
to verse 13, or as near it as the superintendent will 
permit them to get. This is teaching with a shovel, 
and not with a sieve. 

Wise teaching selects, marshals, brings to a focus. 
It excels haphazard teaching as far as a painting by 
Rembrandt excels a whitewashed fence. It does not 
permit ideas to neutralize each other. It has a pur- 
pose, clearly and determinedly held in view, and to 
this purpose it subordinates everything else. It knows 
that the effectiveness of the lesson depends quite as 
much on what is left out as on what is put in. 

Now the more ideas a teacher has, the greater need 
has he of a schedule, just as the railroad that runs 
39 



Sunday-School Success 

most trains is in most need of a good time-table. In- 
deed, the performance of a teacher without a plan 
bears a strong resemblance to a railway collision. 
Ideas, illustrations, exhortations, bump into one an- 
other front and rear, telescope each other, and form 
at the end of the hour a disheartening mass of splin- 
tered fragments, with here and there a jet of steam or 
a puff of smoke. If the teacher has no schedule, the 
scholars on his lesson train will grow confused and 
get nowhere. Small blame to them! 

Imitating Paul, the wise teacher will take for his 
motto, "This one thing I teach." He will teach as 
much more as is possible, but first he will make abso- 
lutely sure of one thing. My own plan in connection 
with every lesson is to lay down one principal, and two 
or three subordinates. It is best to write these down 
on the margin of the quarterly, in precisely the order 
in which they are to be taken up. Ask yourself most 
earnestly, " What is the main lesson this Scripture is 
to teach my scholars?" Having decided on that, 
consider your teaching a success, whatever happens, 
if it has impressed this one truth. Leap to this task 
as swiftly as may be, even if to reach the chosen 
point you must pass hastily over the first portion of 
the lesson. 

After driving home this truth, and making sure of 
it, take up in turn your subordinates. This will re- 
quire a new view of the lesson story that will com- 
pensate for your previous haste. And reserve some 
time at the end of the lesson for a few parting words 
40 



A Teacher with a Schedule 

on your main truth. Save for this time your most 
telling illustration, your most ardent pleading. In 
preparation for this get all questions and difficulties 
out of the way. Be sure, before you begin, that your 
watch is with the superintendent's, and do not permit 
yourself to be caught by the closing bell with your 
lesson only half way to the terminus. 

Some teachers are proud thus to be caught, but 
they should be ashamed. If their neighbor admits 
that he got over the lesson with his class, they are 
filled with amazed pity at his lack of brains. " Why, 
how could you? There was so much in the lesson 
that I scarcely made a beginning." 

Teachers, it is a disgrace to any workman to leave 
behind him an improperly finished job fand we are, 
or should be, just as thorough workmen as any car- 
penter. Select / One truth a Sunday means fifty-two 
truths a year, while fifty-two truths a Sunday would 
not mean one truth a year. Plan / Definite results 
do not come from haphazard methods. Finish I 
One goal reached is greater triumph than fifty goals 
started for. Form a schedule, and carry it out / 



Chapter VI 
My Lesson Chart 

My recipe for a well-prepared lesson is expressed 
in Captain Cuttle's formula: "Make a note on V 

I have read the lesson text, and the text before the 
lesson text and after it. I have read the wisest com- 
mentaries I can find, and as many of them as I can 
find time for. I have " mulled " over the matter for 
myself a day or two. By this time my brain is 
thronged with facts and a-tingle with suggestions. 

Then, the lesson leaf or some other convenient 
copy of the lesson text before me, I construct the 
chart by which to make my Sabbath cruise. 

First, one must get out to sea ; there is the intro- 
duction. How shall I fit this trip in with last Sab- 
bath's voyage, and how shall I get under way? 

As I plan my introductory questions, I write at the 
head of the lesson text some word to represent each 
question, such as "author?" "time?" "place?" 
" circumstances? " " purpose? " " outline? " 

With the questions concerning the text itself, how- 
42 



My Lesson Chart 

ever, I do no writing; I simply underscore neatly 
those words or phrases of the text that will hint at the 
point to be raised. For example, take the verse, 
"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want," and 
the questions: (i) How was this imagery prompted 
by David's life? (2) What use did our Lord make 
of the same simile? (3) What comfort should we get 
from this thought in the trials and uncertainties of 
life? (4) How does Christ's shepherding keep us 
from want? (5) From what kind of want does it 
keep us? (6) What makes you sure of this? (7) How 
was all this proved true in David's case? 

As each question occurs to me, or is suggested by 
my reading, I underscore a word that henceforth 
stands for that question. These words, in the order 
of the questions, are : (1) " shepherd " ; (2) " Lord " ; 
(3) " my " ; (4) a curved line from " shepherd " to 
" I " connecting the two sentences ; (5) " want " ; (6) 
"shall not"; (7) "I." 

It will sometimes need a little thought to decide 
just which word will best represent the question, but 
that very thought will fix the question more firmly in 
the mind. If more than one question should be at- 
tached to one word, make two short underscorings, 
one beside the other. 

When the question contrasts two persons, two ex- 
pressions, or two events, " railroading " is in order — 
a line, that is, drawn clear across the printed page, 
connecting the words which the question connects. 

If you have a parallel Bible, or some lesson help 
43 



Sunday-School Success 

that gives the King James and the Revised versions 
in opposite columns, it is an excellent plan to mark 
in one version all the points of history, geography, 
biography, customs, dates, and the like, and in the 
other the points requiring practical application to 
heart and life. The latter will obviously go best in 
the Revised Version. The points indicated by the 
underscorings in the King James Version may first be 
considered and got out of the way. 

If, however, you must use only the Authorized 
Version, distinguish in some manner between the two 
sets of points — the merely explanatory and the horta- 
tory. Use black ink for the first and red ink for the 
second, or a straight line for the one and a wavy line 
for the other, or for the first a single and for the second 
a double underscore. 

Proceeding in this way, I soon have a line under 
every word requiring explanation, every hint of a 
strange custom, every reference to other parts of the 
Scriptures, every point for practical application. I 
have underscored words representative of all the 
thoughts that especially appeal to me as fitting the 
needs of my class. 

When this has been done, it is time to make my 
outline. If my study has suggested to me an outline 
of my own, that will be better for me than any other 
man's. The outline is the plan of campaign, the 
thing I wish especially to emphasize, and under it, 
ranged in order, the points of minor importance. I 
write this outline on the margin of my lesson text. 
44 



My Lesson Chart 

Having decided on the outline, I go over my un- 
derscorings again, doubly or trebly underscoring the 
words that have reference to the thought around which 
I intend to center the entire lesson — the thought that 
is to be the lesson's enduring monument in the minds 
and lives of my scholars. 

Now I am ready for review. I go over the whole, 
starting with the detached words jotted down at the 
beginning, — "author," "time," "place," etc., — and 
consider all the underscorings, railroadings, and curved 
lines, stopping at each to frame a question of my own 
and to make sure of my best answer. I do this in 
precisely the order in which I intend to take up these 
points in the class. Not the smallest part of my work 
at this juncture is to simplify, by erasing the under- 
scorings where the questions may be spared without 
interfering with my main purpose ; and then I review 
once more in the same way, to confirm my grasp on 
the lesson plan. 

By this time every underscoring is luminous, and 
my page of lesson text has become a graphic picture 
of the lesson I am to teach, a true chart for my 
voyage. 

Do you think the process too tedious, brother 
teacher? It is not a whit too thorough when you 
remember the infinite interests involved; and every 
repetition of it will increase your skill, and the rapid- 
ity of your work. I have used this method for years, 
with various classes, and know it to be practical, 
pleasant, and profitable. Try it, and see. 
45 



Chapter VII 
The Value of a Monotessaron 

Far above concordance, Bible index, Bible diction- 
ary, commentary, I count the monotessaron the very 
best help to Bible study. The monotessaron, it might 
be parenthetically remarked for the benefit of the 
lexicon-lazy folk, is a harmony of the four Gospels, so 
arranged as to make one continuous and complete 
story, in Scripture words alone. 

" Fie! " says one reviewer of a recent monotessaron, 
" we have no use for such compilations. God gave 
us the gospel in four separate books. He could have 
put it in one if it had been best that way." This is 
an argument which would make a heretic of the 
locomotive, printing-press, and any other rearrange- 
ment of God-given matter. Having the four Gospels, 
we may have one. If God had given us only one, we 
could not have the four. 

Christians will always read the four separate Gos- 
pels, in order to see Christ from four separate points 
of view, through four separate individualities, that 
46 



The Value of a Monotessaron 

their differences as well as their agreements may make 
the picture stand out more vividly, much as the two 
diverse flat portions of a stereoscope view combine 
into perfect perspective and reality. 

But this combining is necessary ; and it may be truly 
said that what we lose, in reading the monotessaron, 
of the personality of John or Luke, we more than gain 
in the increased vividness of the person of Christ. 
Speaking for one, I may say that through my first ac- 
quaintance with a monotessaron that matchless life 
has shone upon me with an entire splendor of beauty 
and majesty before unimagined. 

Never before was the life a whole, like Washing- 
ton's or Lincoln's. The imprisonment of John was 
an event in the fourteenth chapter of one Gospel, the 
sixth of another, the third of the rest; the call of 
Matthew now in the ninth chapter, now the second, 
now the fifth; the parable of the sower in the thir- 
teenth, fourth, and eighth chapters. Nothing was in 
a clear, definite relation to the single life. The talk 
with Nicodemus is now no longer to me an event of 
John 3, but of the beginning of the first year of 
Christ's ministry, at the Passover. No longer would 
I be puzzled to tell which came first, the healing of 
the nobleman's son of John 4, or the stilling of the 
tempest of Mark 4, but place the last a year later. 

Not only has the narrative become clear and 

orderly, not only has the wonderful history parted 

itself into the true and helpful time-divisions so 

diverse from the confusing chapters, but the places 

47 



Sunday-School Success 

now stand out, and journeys are distinct. Take any 
diatessaron— that is, any parallel arrangement of the 
four Gospels— and note the wide blanks in each book, 
filled out by others, so that between contiguous verses 
of one Gospel must be inserted whole chapters of an- 
other, complete journeys, many deeds and sayings, 
the location in the meantime greatly changing. A 
geologist will think of the helpful triumph of taking 
from the full rock record here to fill out the uncon- 
formable strata there, until a geological column is 
built up. 

A further inestimable advantage is the appreciation 
of surroundings. What light is cast, for example, on 
the story of Lazarus in John by its insertion in Luke! 
The contact of these parted elements of the gospel 
story sometimes rouses a current of thrilling thoughts, 
making a veritable electric battery of the monotessaron. 

Still another priceless gain is an understanding of 
proportions. Matthew's parallels, Mark's deeds, 
Luke's miracles and parables, John's sermons — in 
reading any of the four Gospels peculiar elements 
come into prominence, and we are left with no idea 
of the relative proportion of these elements in the one 
life. What emphasis did Christ place on the doc- 
trinal, and what on the practical? Just how much 
of his teaching concerned himself and his character? 
What space in the New Testament is occupied by 
miracles? Just what part of Christ's preaching was 
parabolic? What is the prominence of missionary 
effort and proselytism? How much is there of con- 
48 



The Value of a Monotessaron 

solation, and how much of stern rebuke? What 
measure of promise? What quantum of theology? 
What share of ethics? 

These and scores of other questions which occur 
at once to every Christian thinker, the monotessaron 
makes possible of easy and rapid answer. Indeed, 
almost its chief advantage is the spur it affords to the 
spirit of investigation. Those who are statistically in- 
clined can even get at precise ratios by the exact 
process of counting lines. 

Well, that is my experience of the value of a 
monotessaron. It has given the life and person of 
Christ marvelous vividness, setting facts in their due 
order, location, relations, and proportions, while the 
facility it affords is constant inspiration to fresh, de- 
lightful study. This is the experience of thousands, 
and yet I am sure that among the readers of this book 
will be many who are yet unacquainted with this 
Bible help. Not only every Sunday-school teacher, 
but every Bible scholar, should own one. 

The single year in which I wrote this chapter saw 
the publication, in quick succession, of four of these 
monotessarons, one the improved edition of an older 
work. Each of these four has its peculiar features of 
value, and I have compared them carefully to get at 
their characteristics. 

I. "The Interwoven Gospels." Rev. William Pittenger. 

(5 x 7/^ inches, pp. 245. New York : John B. Alden. Price, 

90 cents.) Five plates give clearly the various journeys. The 

Gospel fullest in each event is taken as the standard, and its 

49 



Sunday-School Success 

verse-numberings given, while sentences and phrases interwoven 
from other Gospels are preceded by an inconspicuous letter, to 
designate the book from which they come. This seems to me 
the ideal plan. There is a table for finding in the monotessaron 
any verse of any Gospel. There is a very distinct synopsis. 
The time is indicated only at the heads of the five divisions of 
the story. The place is given at the head of each one of the 
one hundred and seventy-one sections. The index is scant. 
The typography is excellent. The American Revised Version 
is used. 

2. " The Gospel Commentary." J. R. Gilmore (" Edmund 
Kirke") and Lyman Abbott, D.D. (5x7 inches, pp. 840. 
New York : Fords, Howard & Hulbert. Price, $1.50.) This 
monotessaron is combined with an excellent and very full com- 
mentary, selected from the works of three hundred authors. 
These multitudinous notes somewhat mar the impression of 
unity and continuity for which the monotessaron is peculiarly 
valued. No maps. Information as to sources of the combined 
text is given only by references at the top of the page — an in- 
definite way. There is a table for finding in the monotessaron 
any verse of any Gospel. There is a chronological synopsis, 
but no diatessaron table. There is a good index of thirty-two 
pages, and a marginal synopsis. The time is minutely indicated 
at the head of each page, and the locations shown irregularly, 
in notes, chapter headings, or marginal synopsis. There are 
forty-three chapters. The typography is clear. The King 
James Version is mainly used. 

3. " The Fourfold Gospel." J. G. Butler, D.D. (5 x 7^ 
inches, pp. 212. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Price, 75 
cents.) This is taken from Butler's "Bible Work." The 
sources of the text and transitions are indicated as in Pittenger's, 
but not quite so minutely. Places are given at the head of the 
one hundred and sixty-six sections. Times not shown. A 
good diatessaron synopsis, and a table to find in the monotes- 
saron any verse from any Gospel. Two sketch-maps. No 
index whatever. King James Version. 

5o 



The Value of a Monotessaron 

4. "The One Gospel." A. T. Pierson, D.D. (5 x 7>£ 
inches, pp. 203. New York : The Baker & Taylor Company. 
Price, 75 cents.) This monotessaron contains the gospel story 
in forty-seven sections, with no section headings, and no indi- 
cations whatever of times, places, or sources of the various 
portions of the text. Valuable for reading, but unsatisfactory 
for study. A capital index. No table for finding verses, no 
synopsis or maps. King James Version. Retains more than 
the others nearly equivalent words and phrases. 

Each of these excellent compilations has its own 
field, and the student who can afford the luxury will 
rejoice in them all. Happy times in which we live, 
wherein the person of Christ is brought with such 
clearness and fullness and beauty as never before to 
the poorest and busiest and most unlearned! 



5i 



Chapter VIII 
Getting Attention 

I was once sergeant of a college military com- 
pany that was being trained by an officer of the regu- 
lar army from the nearest barracks. In one evolution 
it was made my duty to march at the head of a long 
column, shouting at the top of my voice : " Hep — hep 
— hep — hep!" This was to give the time; we had 
no drum. I conscientiously obeyed orders and 
strutted off, shouting the required " Hep— hep— hep 
— hep! " But alas! at a critical turn, thinking more 
of my glory than of my duty, I marched to the right, 
while the column, more heedful, turned off to the left. 
So there I was, a long, lank figure, strutting off by 
myself over the field, shouting " Hep— hep— hep! " 
How many times since, when standing before inat- 
tentive classes, have I repeated that mortifying per- 
formance, less obviously, but none the less really! 

How often teachers are bent on planning what they 
are to say and how they are to say it, but omit to con- 
sider how they may induce people to attend to it; 
52 



Getting Attention 

just as if (to change the figure) a locomotive engineer 
should polish and oil his engine and turn on full 
steam, but forget the little coupling-pin that hitches 
the engine to the train ! It is a very little thing, this 
coupling-pin of attention, and often the teacher goes 
puffing a long way before he perceives that it is left 
out ; and it is a great humiliation, as well as a great 
loss of time and steam, to go back and hitch on. 

The first thing to be considered, if we would win 
attention, is the room. Poor janitors spoil more 
Sunday-schools than poor teachers. You remember 
how the Peterkins tried to take their drive, shaking 
the reins, clucking at the stationary horse, whipping 
and coaxing him by turns, and all in vain until the 
lady from Philadelphia unhitched the obstinate beast. 
We make Peterkins of ourselves every time we try to 
take an intellectual journey with our pupils when they 
are tied down by hot air, poor ventilation, uncom- 
fortable seats, and surrounding noise and bustle. All 
our pedagogical ingenuity will fight in vain against 
the fiendish ingenuity of a bad janitor. 

Having made it possible for the children to pay any 
attention at all, the next thing is to get it. Attention 
has something to do with tension. Now it takes two 
to stretch a cord, and there are two parties to every 
act of attention. How about the second party in this 
case — the children? 

Imprimis, when you appear before the children, leap 
at once into your theme. Older folks rather like to 
doze along through the preliminaries of a speech, 
53 



Sunday-School Success 

economically saving their enthusiasm for the end, if 
not for next time ; but the attention of children is lost 
or won for good by the opening sentences. Our 
sharp boys and girls discover very quickly whether a 
veteran or a raw recruit is calling " Attention ! " 

There are some beginnings which are sure to offend 
them. There is the bagpipe beginning— the long, 
droning prelude, which advertises a teacher set out on 
a mud-turtle to catch these lively colts. There is 
the jack-in-the-box prelude : "Eh! Now, children! 
What's lesson 'bout? Quick! " There is the crape- 
dirge beginning, which solemnly hopes the children 
have studied their lesson and will recite better than 
they did last Sunday. There is the plead-guilty be- 
ginning : " You'll have to teach me to-day, children. 
I've been unable to look at the lesson." 

But it is by no means easy to give affirmative rules. 
The best of beginnings, if stereotyped, becomes in- 
efficient. No general can plan a campaign in ad- 
vance. And yet a general must understand the art 
of war, and a teacher must study his tactics. 

In the first place, attention is won partly by posi- 
tion and attitude. Happy the teacher whose class is 
a semicircle, himself at the center! And luckless the 
teacher whose class, fixed on straight, fastened pews, 
sees past him the distracting background of a crowded, 
bustling school! He struggles against strong odds. 

But whatever may be the position of the class, any 
one can see that his own attitude shall command 
attention. Let him be straight, alert, confident, quiet 
54 



Getting Attention 

—not flabby, nervous, and diffident. Let his face 
and voice and bearing expect attention, and he will 
get it. 

The opening sentences must be businesslike. 
There must be no indecision, no "puttering." The 
teacher must leap at once to that hand-to-hand com- 
bat with the theme which tells his scholars that there's 
purpose in it. The opening sentences may sometimes 
best catch the class by directly addressing one person 
in it, the most restless, indifferent one, and nailing 
him. 

A paradox is good to begin with, some statement 
of the lesson theme so startling as to spur to discus- 
sion, possibly to opposition. Then the next Sunday, 
perhaps a quiet picture of the historical setting of the 
story, or a description of the landscape surrounding 
the event, or a compact review of the last lesson. 
Then the next day you might begin with a bit of per- 
sonal experience bearing on the matter in hand. 
Nothing wins attention better than the first person 
singular. Or your introduction might be a whiff of 
fun, for which the youngsters are so eager that the 
most witless piece of jollity, if it spring from a merry 
heart, is certain to reach theirs. 

You are sure of their attention if you can get them 
to do something for you— open their Bibles, repeat 
something in concert, find a verse, or look at some- 
thing. For this purpose maps, diagrams, pictures, all 
material objects connected with the lesson, are invalu- 
able. Scholars yield their wills to yours through their 
55 



Sunday-School Success 

hands or their eyes more readily than through their 
ears. 

And none of this must be done with manifest pur- 
pose. Surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of 
any bird. Woe to the teacher who shouts the word 
"Attention!" He will get nothing but the echo of 
the word from stony cliffs of indifference. 

And finally, woe to the teacher who relies at bottom 
on any skill of his own to draw young hearts to his 
teaching ; whose main dependence is anything but the 
attention-winning power of that incarnate Sympathy 
and Love who promised to draw all men— and chil- 
dren—to himself. 



56 



Chapter IX 
Keeping Attention 

We are likely to think that the attention of children 
is hard to get ; but the very opposite is true. The 
minds of children, like their tongues, are hung in the 
middle. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn 
them in any direction. No teacher need spend much 
force on his introduction. Merely appear and begin 
to talk— that is enough. A fresh voice and presence 
and a new theme will draw all eyes and all hearts. If 
grown people are your audience, the situation is some- 
what reversed. They are the heavy weights — hard 
to move, but just as hard to stop. An attention- 
forcing prelude will hold them attentive to a good 
half-hour of platitudes. 

The teacher of children, however, flattered by the 
eager listening given at the start, is likely to relax his 
efforts and deem the crown of the children's interest 
already attained. But alas! soon here a little tot 
wriggles, and there another whispers, and yonder a 
third giggles, and now a fourth turns around to see 
57 



Sunday-School Success 

what's up, and the teacher might as well be talking 
to a school of young fishes. 

Demosthenes once said that if whatever a man got 
he took care to keep, he was grateful to the gods ; but 
if he spent it, he spent with it all his gratitude. How 
many teachers are so prodigal of the attention given 
at the beginning that toward the close, dismayed at 
the listlessness, they forget ungratefully their initial 
capital of bright eyes and eager ears! There are 
many ways of squandering this attention capital. We 
may waste it on those long exhortations so very 
valuable (when omitted), on side issues, on quibbles. 
We may choke it with dullness, drive it off with 
scolding. 

The only way always to keep attention is always 
to be expecting to lose it. Be prompt to note signs 
of its vanishing in drooping eyelids, wandering gaze, 
jerking in the seat, uncertain answers. The teacher 
whose ingenuity can always recall stray-away minds 
need fear few other recitation problems. How 
to do it? 

The best provocative of attention is variety. The 
skilled teacher brings as many suits of manner to the 
class as the bulkiest clown wears costumes to the cir- 
cus. Before one suit becomes wearisome he strips it 
off, and presto ! a fresh teacher before the wide-eyed 
children. If he has been sitting, he rises ; if erect, he 
leans eagerly forward. His utterance becomes rapid 
from slow, impetuous from drawling. He darts from 
generalizations into personalities. If motionless be- 
58 



Keeping Attention 

fore, he begins to gesticulate. This is acting? No. 
It is only doing what the facile children themselves 
do on their kaleidoscopic playground, where no one 
goes to sleep. 

Again, a teacher must learn to emphasize his 
important points, not by enlarging on them, but 
by reverting to them. Slight impression on a wall 
by holding a battering-ram against it! Nor 
can you impress a child's mind by holding a fact 
up against it. It is intervals which make blows 
possible. 

So the child will attend to two things or three bet- 
ter than to one. Concentrate on one matter, burning- 
glass fashion, but only while the sun of interest is 
shining. With the first mist of indifference the wise 
teacher will drop the burning-glass. More teachers 
fail from having too few points to make than from 
having too many. 

But to retain attention, you need less to multiply 
points than points of view. A teacher can usually 
fix the attention of his class upon one subject while 
using in succession six different methods of treatment. 
Passing swiftly from questioning to formulating prin- 
ciples and illustrating them, from Bible quotations to 
personal experiences and exhortations, he will hold 
his audience delighted, though a single method would 
have wearied it. Note how a skilled cook presents 
the Thanksgiving turkey on different days. It is a 
lordly brown biped, a plateful of nice slices, a salad, 
a pot-pie, hash. Teachers will be able to hold the 
59 



Sunday-School Success 

youngsters' attention as well as cooks, if they learn 
thus to put things in different lights. 

Furthermore, let it be remembered that no one was 
ever dignified with a child, and won its attention. 
And some teachers are too staid to be useful. Startle 
into inattention by a smart slap of the hands together, 
sharp extension of the finger, abrupt turns upon the 
floor. Preachers use such artifices when pews grow 
somnolent, and why not teachers? Never forget that 
the slightest inanimate object wins attention better 
than the greatest animation of the teacher. A pencil- 
tablet will rivet all eyes. A finger laid upon a map 
is cynosure for the most fidgety scholars. If you 
have a picture which can be brought into connection 
with the lesson, it is a pedagogical sin to omit it. A 
chart is as necessary to the Sabbath-school teacher as 
to the sailor, albeit the teacher's is best home-made. 
I used to hesitate to take time to use such helps ; but 
I found that the poorest picture did better work than 
my most vivid word-paintings, and that my clearest 
statement was inefficient beside the clumsiest dia- 
gram. 

The beginner in this fine art of attention-holding is 
likely to derive the word "attention" thus: from 
teneo, " I hold," ad, " on to " ; attention, " I hold on 
to " him. He tries to hold attention, therefore, by 
main strength. He grapples with his audience as a 
bulldog would. His nerves are tense. His voice is 
imperative. His eye glares. He is rapid, impetuous, 
strategic. This is power, he thinks, and this is skill ; 
60 



Keeping Attention 

but his audience astonishes him by going to sleep. 
Abashed, he tries milder means of holding on to them. 
He begins to buttonhole his audience. He uses soft 
and nattering tones. He coaxes. He wheedles. 
He jokes. He chucks them under the chin. And 
then his audience gets up and goes out. 

The real meaning of the word " attention " contains 
an invaluable hint for all who are trying to win others 
by speaking or teaching. It is teneo, "I hold, I 
stretch," ad, " toward " ; and it is not by any means 
applied to the speaker, but to the listener. To get 
your audience, whether of little folk or big folk, to 
stretch out toward the same goal of truth that you are 
seeking is the true art of winning attention. 

This understanding of the matter implies that the 
teacher also is really in pursuit of truth himself. The 
failure of much teaching is because it cries " Go on " 
instead of " Come on." The speaker that you follow 
with most difficulty is the speaker who has the air of 
" knowing it all," while the speaker who succeeds best 
in holding your attention gives you the impression of 
a chase. 

There's the game before you — that elusive truth 
slipping away through the thicket yonder. The 
huntsman's eye flashes. He whistles up the dogs. 
We all leap to the saddles. Off we go, over upland 
and vale, swamp and rock, fence and ditch, our 
leader far in the van, pointing here, waving there, and 
hallooing the huntsman on. And when the game is 
tracked down, and our leader stands above it, drip- 
61 



Sunday-School Success 

ping knife in hand, our veins tingle with his, and we 
shout with delight at our triumph. 

This is the first principle in the art of winning at- 
tention. The speaker must give the impression of a 
truth-seeker, if he would win others to seek truth with 
him. What Edward Everett Hale once said of a 
sermon applies to this. Every Sunday-school lesson 
should start out to prove something. It should have 
some goal. It should intend something. Intention 
must precede attention. 

But though there must be this element of pleasing 
uncertainty and suspense, we all have difficulty in 
attending to a speaker who does not appear to have 
himself well in hand or to be quite sure what he is 
about. Have you not caught yourselves, teachers, 
talking as if in your sleep ? Have you not sometimes 
waked up at the end of a sentence, a question, or a 
harangue, and wondered what you had been talking 
about? Did you suppose that any one else knew? 
Did you expect to hold on to them when you had no 
grasp of the subject? Can listeners pay attention to 
any one who does not pay attention to himself? 

Teachers make the mistake of dividing attention 
between the class, to watch that they hear ; and them- 
selves, to see how they are getting along ; and the little 
attention left goes to the theme. Not unnaturally, 
the attention of the class is divided in the same way 
— much to themselves, less to the teacher, and least of 
all to what is being taught. Of course it is a teacher's 
business to hold his scholars' attention, but he will 
62 



Keeping Attention 

never do it by worrying and wondering whether he is 
succeeding. 

Nay, I even go so far as to say, if one of your 
pupils pays no attention, then pay no attention to him, 
provided the mischief is not spreading. A teacher 
should not fritter away his attention on inattentive 
pupils. If he cannot win their attention by his own 
interest in his theme, he cannot win it at all. Not 
that I would imply for a moment, however, that the 
teacher is to rest satisfied while a single one of his 
pupils remains inattentive. If your chicks are average 
chicks they are gregarious, and one stray-away is 
enough to carry the whole flock with him into foreign 
parts. While you have a single inattentive scholar 
you should conduct your lesson with a view to hold- 
ing him. You will hold the rest then, as a matter of 
course. I am only speaking of the best way to win 
attention. It must be won, or you are beaten to some 
extent ; and the attention of all will be won in the end 
if you are deeply enough in earnest yourself, if you 
do not allow your attention to be side-tracked by the 
inattention of a few. If you wish to win and hold 
the attention of others, win and hold your own. 



63 



Chapter X 
The Importance of Questioning 

Ever since Socrates, conversation has been the soul 
of teaching, and ever since Adam and Eve the ques- 
tion has been the life of conversation. A teacher's 
success depends, in about equal measure, upon in- 
spiration, cogitation, and interrogation. Let the first 
be the great gravitative forces ; let the second provide 
the truth, the liquid ; then the interrogation-point is 
the curved siphon, which transfers from the full to the 
empty vessel! 

Many, many a teacher has failed, thinking himself 
not wise enough, or not energetic enough, while in 
reality he has simply failed to be wisely and ener- 
getically quizzical. 

But what is a question? Is it not a fish-hook for 
pulling out, rather than a siphon for putting in? 
Yes, later ; but you cannot fish successfully in a dry 
pond. Any bungler can examine and test. The nice 
art is to use your interrogation-points as instruments 
of addition, rather than of subtraction. 
64 



The Importance of Questioning 

But why is it often better to insinuate instruction 
through a question, in preference to pouring by direct 
harangue? Well, does not a question imply commu- 
nity of interest, and hint at equality or similarity of at- 
tainment? The question is neighborly ; the discourse 
mounts a platform. 

The helpful lesson commentaries fail, practically, 
to reach many a class, because its teacher in reading 
has failed to translate from the declarative into the 
interrogative. If Doctor Somebody writes tersely, 
" A sin that is born of your own will is tenfold more 
dangerous to you than your own sin that is born of 
your neighbor's will," Johnny will not get the point 
unless the teacher transforms it somewhat thus : " If 
you are out in the country all alone, Johnny, jump 
over a fence, steal a pocketful of apples, is that a sin 
just as much as if some other boy should be along and 
persuade you to do it? Yes? Well, now, which sin 
is the more dangerous to you? " 

So important does this seem to me that I always 
carry pencil and paper to the perusal of my lesson 
helps, and write out, as a point pleases me, the form 
in which I wish to bring it up in the class, ranging 
these questions under the numbers of the verses to 
which they apply. 

The teacher who does not write out his questions, 
or do the equivalent of that work, is as sure to be de- 
feated as the general who fights without a plan of 
campaign. 

Should those questions be read in the class? Not 
65 



Sunday-School Success 

unless your ideal of teaching is the company drill, in- 
stead of the conversation. 

It is well, however, to ask the scholars to write out 
questions for you on verses assigned, and read these 
questions before the class. The teacher's work is 
grandly accomplished when he has induced the 
scholar to ask his own questions, and work out his 
own answers. 

I often find that a general call for questions on some 
apparently exhausted topic brings the richest results 
of the half-hour. 

Few verses are completely treated without Lyman 
Beecher's "snapper," — the appeal to experience. 
The question, " Is it I ? " must be raised, no matter 
by how direct urgings, in every heart. That question 
is truth's barb. 

There is a questioning face and attitude, indicative 
V of a real and personal interest in the thing considered, 
without which a question will always fall dead, and 
deservedly. 

Nor, on the contrary, will a live manner avail to 
foist upon the attention of a class a dead question. 
And a question is " dead " to your scholar which does 
not touch his own world of interest at some point, no 
matter how close connection it may have with your 
life and experience. 

The questions on the lesson leaves make a good aid 
in study, but do most pitiably convict a teacher of 
unfaithfulness if he use them in teaching. 

Most genuine of all questions, and most likely to 
66 



The Importance of Questioning 

be helpful, are the doubts, perplexities, and difficulties 
which attend a thoughtful teacher's first careful read- 
ing of the text itself. Then is the time when the 
cream of that lesson should rise. 

Leading questions are always better than harangue, 
and are not to be despised, on a pinch. See what 
use Socrates made of them! And, by the way, 
modern teachers could learn much as to methods 
from the dialogues of that old pagan. 

By all means we must learn to link our questions, 
naturally developing one from the other. Read a 
page of miscellaneous proverbs, and you will carry 
away from it the same bewildered brain much Sun- 
day-school sharp-shooting produces. Use the solid 
phalanx ! 

Infinite harm is done our teaching by " questioning 
down." Do you know how tiresome it is to talk to 
a man up in a third-story window, you in the street? 
Our " level-best " teaching must be on a level. 

The novice at questioning, when first he becomes 
well satisfied with himself in this line, will probably 
be making his chief mistake,— will have hit upon an 
interrogative phraseology in which his thoughts run 
easily, which he uses incessantly. The artful ques- 
tioner will rack his brains to the utmost stretch of in- 
genuity to devise striking and novel ways of quizzing, 
to hold the restless young minds. 

Of course, no skilled questioner will take the class 
in order. Of course, he will name the person who is 
to answer, at the end, and not at the beginning, of his 
67 



Sunday-School Success 

question. Of course, he will understand the use of 
long and attention-holding questions, interspersed 
with short, quick, attention-exciting questions. Of 
course, he will be ready with a varying form of the 
question if he has to repeat it, lest the class fail to 
listen the second time. Of course, he will train him- 
self to become ready with a "catch" question,— a 
question with a quirk in it, to punish mildly the in- 
attentive. Of course, he will know when the class 
needs unifying by the general question addressed to 
all, and when the subject needs unifying by the gen- 
eral question reviewing all. And, of course, he will 
have learned that the best teacher of this, as of all 
arts, is He whose boyish questions in the temple grew 
to such mighty answers that no man thereafter dared 
question him, save only his true disciples. 



68 



Chapter XI 
A Good Question 

If I were asked to name the chief fault of the 
average teacher, I should say, "Asking questions 
that can be answered by ' Yes ' and ' No. 5 " Among 
my acquaintances was once a teacher in a seclaru 
school whose method of questioning was invariably 
this. He would have before him the statements of 
the text-book, copied out with painstaking care, and 
would develop the subject thus : " Is it true or is it 
not true, Mr. A — — , that"— and here would follow 
the statement or definition of the text-book. The 
ambiguous answer, "Yes," was amply satisfactory. 
Unfortunately, when such teachers gain a foothold 
in the Sunday-school, they are not so easily dismissed 
as from secular establishments. 

Now, a good question merely furnishes the starting- 
point, and pushes the scholar out along the course 
toward some goal of truth ; but in a question that 
can be answered by " Yes " or " No " the teacher him- 
self ambles amiably up the track, and condescendingly 
69 



Sunday-School Success 

allows the scholar's monosyllable to pat him on the 
head after he himself has reached the goal. A ques- 
tion that can be answered by " Yes " or " No " merely 
formulates the truth as it exists in the teacher's mind, 
and invites the scholar's assent to it ; a good question, 
on the contrary, provokes the scholar to formulate 
truth for himself. 

Now, it is much easier to express what we see to 
be true than to get any one else to express original 
thought. There is also, to the unwise, more glory in 
laying down principles to which others must agree 
than in getting others to lay down principles to which 
we must agree. It will always be true, therefore, 
that the lazy and the pompous will have no aim be- 
yond educing monosyllabic answers. Most teachers, 
however, are earnestly desirous of the best, but do 
not know how to frame wise questions. What must 
be said to them? 

First, that they must not go to school before their 
scholars. Expert questioning is not learned in the 
class-room, but in the study. A lead-pencil is the 
best teacher. A sheet of paper is the best drill- 
ground. As I have urged before : Let the Sunday- 
school worker who aspires to the high praise of a 
good questioner sit down persistently, after studying 
the lesson, and write out a set of questions. Nay ; 
on each point, so far as he has time, let him write 
several questions, criticise them, fancy what kind of 
answer each will be likely to elicit from the scholar, 
and choose what appears the best question. Try 
70 



A Good Question 

it on the class, and learn valuable lessons from the 
result. 

This method, laborious as it is, must be kept up 
until skilful questioning has become instinctive. 
That there may be hope of this happy result, by the 
way, the written questions must never be used in the 
class, — only the memory of them, and the drill the 
preparation has given. It surely will happen, sooner 
or later, that the careful student of practical peda- 
gogics will be able to get along without writing, 
merely formulating fit questions in his mind as he 
studies the lesson. After a time he may dispense even 
with this, and look simply after the points to be pre- 
sented, trusting to extemporaneous question-making. 

Not wholly, however. The best questioner in the 
world gets into ruts. The best forms of questions 
ever invented are worse than the worst if they are 
used with dull reiteration. No one can devote care- 
ful attention to the form of his questions without 
falling in love with some particular way of question- 
ing; and this will not always be the best way, but 
will probably be the most original way. A form of 
question that is irreproachable the first time will be 
unendurable used six times in succession. It is 
necessary, then, even for the trained questioner, to 
revert now and then to his old lead-pencil drill, in 
order to study variety. 

But how may the uninitiated know a good question 
when they see it, or make it? As said already, it 
must not be such that a lazy monosyllable may an- 
7i 



Sunday-School Success 

swer it. As said already, too, if one is in doubt, he 
has but to try it on the class, and note results. But 
further. A good question will be likely to have some- 
thing piquant about it, if the subject admits. For 
instance, "James was killed, Peter was freed; why 
was that? " is better than saying, " How do you ac- 
count for the fact that while the apostle James was 
beheaded, the apostle Peter was delivered from the 
hands of his persecutors? " 

Furthermore, the difference between a poor ques- 
tion and a good one may often be a mere matter of 
length. " Why did the Christians at Antioch keep 
the inferior leaders for work in the city, but send 
away the most prominent men in their church to 
labor as missionaries?" That is abominable; it 
should be, "Why did the Antioch Christians send 
away their best men? " 

A good question will contain as much as possible 
of the personal element. " What do you understand 
by the phrase ' remission of sins ' ? " is much better 
than " What is the significance of the phrase ' remis- 
sion of sins ' ? " Because the personal question puts 
the expected answer in a more modest light, the an- 
swer will be more unconstrained and full. 

And, by the way, there are few forms of questions 
more zealously to be avoided than the form I have 
just used, "What do you understand by — ? " It is 
the unfailing resource of the poor questioner. A 
verse will be read, a phrase quoted, a doctrine or a 
principle named, and then will follow, as the night 
72 



A Good Question 

the day, the tiresome old formula, "What do you 

understand by this, Miss A ? " One would be 

quite safe in declaring, at any particular instant dur- 
ing common Sunday-school hours, that one-fourth of 
the Sunday-school teachers of the world were repeat- 
ing, with united breath, that Methuselah of a query, 
"What do you understand by this? " 

Again, a good question must be swift. It must 
come so quickly that there will be no time to get out 
of the way. Some questions that, if written out, would 
not be bad, are prolonged in the utterance of over- 
deliberate teachers like foggy illustrations of the law 
of perspective. Good questions leap. You feel their 
buoyancy as you read them or hear them. It is like 
the huntsman springing into the saddle and shouting, 
"Come on!" No one with an atom of thoughtful- 
ness is dull to the exhilaration of spirited ques- 
tions. They have inspired all the wise thinking of 
the world. 

And, finally, good questions should be absolutely 
clear. There is one thing in the world that must 
always be faultlessly perspicuous and distinct, and 
that is a marching order in time of battle. Now, 
questions are the marching orders of our scholars' 
brain regiments, in a battle of infinite moment. Let 
them ring clearly as ever bugle-call was sounded. 
Questions mumbled, hesitant, caught up and patched 
over, confused and slovenly, — what wonder if these 
get slow and mumbled answers ? A question clearly 
put, not only proves that the questioner has clear 
73 



Sunday-School Success 

ideas, but it wondrously clarifies the ideas of the 
answerer. 

Good questions, then, are thought-compelling, 
varied, short, personal, piquant, unhackneyed, brisk, 
and clear. Do I ask too much? Nothing that all 
may not acquire, if but a tithe of the zeal and labor 
claimed by the trivialities of a few years are spent 
upon these issues of eternity. Let every teacher con- 
sider what characteristics of a good questioner he 
may add to his pedagogical outfit. 



74 



Chapter XII 
Inspiring Questions 

I use this title advisedly, because I believe that it 
requires more genuine inspiration to lead the average 
scholar to ask questions than to perform any other 
part of the teacher's difficult task. How easy to ask 
our own questions, to put in our own answers in order 
to draw them out again, were that all of it! But to 
transform the passive into the active, the auditor into 
the investigator, the questioned into the questioner, 
that is the goal of the true teacher's endeavor. 

Shall we count a recitation successful when the 
teacher has been earnest and zealous in his inquisi- 
tion, the scholars ready and full in their responses? 
A single question, borne, it may be, on a voice so 
timid that it is scarcely audible in the buzzing room, 
yet sprung from some young heart just moved with 
the sudden desire of truth, is worth all the rest. 

If the teacher wishes to carry his scholars beyond 
the parasite stage, which is just as dangerous intellec- 
tually as physically, both to the parasite and its sup- 
75 



Sunday-School Success 

porter, he must learn first that this weaning comes 
not without thoughtfulness and design. He must 
learn that, even more carefully than he plans the 
questions he is to ask his scholars, he must plan to 
inspire them to ask questions themselves. He will 
be most successful if, from the many matters which 
could be brought up in the lesson, he selects two or 
three of prime importance, and schemes to elicit the 
questioning enthusiasm of his class along those few 
lines. But how to do it? 

In the first place, the teacher must be a questioner 
himself. An old hen can hardly teach the eagle's 
brood to fly. Do not hesitate to tell your scholars 
of the doubts you once had, and how you won cer- 
tainty from them. Show them by example that doubt 
is never a thing to be afraid of or ashamed of, unless 
it be a lazy doubt, viciously pleased with its own fog. 

Then there is a question-inspiring face and atti- 
tude. If the teacher assumes the manner pontific 
and speaks ex cathedra, and has the air of one who 
says the ultimate word, he will smother every ques- 
tion. A sympathetic, open face, and the hearty spirit 
of good-fellowship, are the best invitations to inquiries. 

Nor must the teacher be in a hurry, hastening from 
verse to verse with the nervous dispatch of an auc- 
tioneer. How many times must even a wise man 
look at a beetle, and how long, before he is moved 
to ask a wise question concerning it? Don't we 
sometimes make the recitation a mere exhibition of 
shooting-stars? 

76 



Inspiring Questions 

Then, too, be on the watch for questions. How 
far ahead can you see a question coming? Before 
the scholar has made up his mind to ask it, if you 
have seeing eyes. An almost imperceptible quiver 
of the lips: " Question, Thomas?" Eyes suddenly 
wider: "What were you about to ask, Mary?" 
Forehead wrinkled : " Anything to say on that point, 
Edward?" 

And if the question is a good one, why, " A capital 
question, Thomas! " " I hoped that some one would 
ask that, Mary!" A good question is more to be 
praised than a good answer, because it is rarer and 
more original ; but does it always receive our hearty 
commendation ? 

Though the question leads you far out of your way, 
turn aside for it as gladly as you would turn from 
the road to pick up a diamond. Though you must 
leave the climax of the lesson unreached, see in this 
the climax. Though you are in full harangue, eagerly 
showing forth some great truth, stop short at once. 
A question in hand is worth a whole system of theol- 
ogy in the bush. 

And even if the question be trivial, or pointless, or 
utterly irrelevant, in anticipation of other possible 
questions, this one is not to be scornfully or slightingly 
waved aside. Don't kill the goose that lays golden 
eggs when she chances to lay one of pewter! 

Half-statements, when shrewdly managed, will 
often elicit questions. " Yes, God was terribly angry 
with the Jews,— terribly. Think how powerful God 
77 



Sunday-School Success 

is, and how awful his anger must be! You want to 
ask something, Billy? Whether it is right for God 
to be angry? Well, I am glad you asked that, be- 
cause I want to tell you the difference between his 
anger and ours." 

An over-statement will often draw out the longed- 
for inquiry. " When John urged every one with two 
coats to give one to some person who had no coat, 
what did he mean but this, — that, as long as any one 
in the world is poor, those who have more than they 
need ought to keep giving to those who have less 
than they need? I see that you have a word for us, 
Lizzie. What is it? How about the lazy people 
and the bad men? I hoped some one would bring 
up that point!" 

And when your half-statement or over-statement 
is accepted without remonstrance by your scholars, 
a little jolly scolding as you make the correction your- 
self, and a warning that they must do better thinking 
the next time, will work wonders. 

Sometimes the best plan is a direct call. ff What 
do you think about that statement, now? Haven't 
you some question to ask about it? Don't you want 
to know something more about it? " If not a ques- 
tion follows, at least the scholars will know that you 
are expecting them to originate lines of thought and 
inquiry ; and that is one thing gained. 

This question is sometimes asked : " What modern 
teacher is so successful as Socrates, who made his 
scholars teachers in their turn?" The question 
78 



Inspiring Questions 

touches a fundamental truth in pedagogics,— that the 
teacher's goal is the scholar's independence of the 
teacher. By brave example of sturdy thought, by 
sympathetic insight into the doubts and needs of the 
opening mind, by enthusiasm and winning tact, let 
us strive in this direction, as in all others, to be worthy 
followers of Him who made of his disciples teachers 
at whose feet the great Greek himself would have 
been glad to sit. 



79 



Chapter XIII 
Trigger-Teaching 

The hard-working Sunday-school teacher picks up 
his cartridge, proudly carries it to the desired desti- 
nation, and there explodes it. The shrewd Sunday- 
school teacher uses the scholar as a rifle, and simply 
pulls the trigger. Some teachers, that is, consider 
themselves as big guns. Other and better teachers 
seek to make practical working guns of their scholars. 
Between the two styles of teaching there is this differ- 
ence, that the trigger-teaching usually hits the mark, 
while the big-gun teacher finds that the mark, if it is 
a live one, has taken itself out of the way by the time 
he has carried the cartridge to it. 

In big-gun teaching the teacher does everything 
for the scholar ; in trigger-teaching the teacher does 
nothing for the scholar that he can help. In big- 
gun teaching the teacher thinks ; in trigger-teaching 
the teacher thinks how to get his scholars to think. 
Big-gun teaching parades; trigger-teaching stays in 
the tent and issues orders. Big-gun teaching is amus- 
80 



Trigger-Teaching 

ing ; trigger-teaching is suggestive. Big-gun teaching 
develops the teacher; trigger-teaching develops the 
scholar. The teacher's true work is to educate, and 
" educate " means " to draw out," and not " to carry 
to." 

"Oh! our scholars are not loaded," I hear many 
teachers object. " If we should pull the trigger, there 
would follow only a ridiculous click." 

But your scholars are loaded, objectors. Though 
they may not be loaded with precisely the information 
you have been seeking from them, they are loaded with 
experiences, — all their short lives will hold. They 
are loaded with temptations and troubles and needs. 
They are loaded with questions and curiosity. They 
have information, too, any amount of it, that may be 
brought into suggestive connection with the lesson, 
if you know how to make shrewd use of their public- 
school history and geography and science. 

To be sure, they probably know nothing definite 
about the time of the lesson's events, or the place, or 
the persons, or the circumstances. Well, make them 
load themselves. As you rehearse these facts con- 
cisely, make your scholars write them on slips of 
paper. Send one to the board, to set down what you 
dictate. Get one of their number to read aloud some 
brief and comprehensive summary of the lesson de- 
tails. In one or all of these ways make them load 
themselves, and then — nothing is accomplished if 
you stop here — pull the trigger! 

More than on any other thing save the help of 
81 



Sunday-School Success 

the Holy Spirit, a teacher's success depends on the 
use he makes of the fact that his scholars are already 
loaded to some effective purpose ; and the wise 
teacher will always ask himself, in the course of his 
preparation for the lesson, " What experiences of the 
members of my class will help them understand this 
lesson and its truths?" One has been sick lately. 
One is studying geology. One has a father who is 
a banker. One has just seen the Mammoth Cave. 

If these things are to be likened to the bullets and 
shot, what is the powder? Must the teacher depend 
for that, too, largely on the pupil? Yes. 

To be sure, much of the powder of successful teach- 
ing is the zeal and eagerness of the teacher himself. 
But his interest is a smokeless powder like the ful- 
minating powder of the cap, whose value is solely to 
set fire to the powder of the scholar when the trigger 
is pulled. The scholar's interest, the scholar's powder, 
it is that must be relied upon to do the work, to carry 
the ball. 

And so in trigger-teaching, much depends on the 
teacher's ability to excite curiosity and arouse interest. 
He will study his scholars' likings, and appeal to them 
in his illustrations ; their needs, and refer to them in 
his applications. Sometimes he will state the matter 
too strongly, sometimes too feebly; in each case, 
with the express intention to draw out their protest. 
He will know how to use paradox so as to arouse, 
but not confuse. He will study different methods of 
emphasis, and will not use one alone. From each 
82 



Trigger-Teaching 

lesson he will select one truth, and one only, which 
he will treat with all the ardor of a lawyer arguing a 
matter of life or death. Above all, he will remember 
that the Spirit alone quickeneth, and will earnestly 
pray that fire from heaven may be added to his own 
little fulminating cap. 

But many a teacher, conscious of all that I have 
been saying, does not know how to pull the trigger. 
It is not so simple in the Sunday-school as in the 
school of the battalion. The artful teacher will find 
many ways of trigger-pulling, suited to the diverse 
and changing needs of his class and of his topic. 
Sometimes he will put in the scholars' hands paper 
and pencil, and set them to writing or drawing. Some- 
times he will send them in turn to his blackboard. 
Sometimes he will elicit the entire story from one, 
sometimes from ten. Sometimes he will introduce 
pictures for them to talk about, or maps for them to 
travel over, or objects for them to group their words 
and thoughts around. Always, however, he will re- 
member that his best trigger is the little trigger-shaped 
inteiTogation-point. He will ask questions himself 
with the effectiveness born of careful preparation. 
Better than that, he will get his scholars to ask ques- 
tions. In all these ways, and as many more as there 
are Sundays in the year, the wise teacher will pull 
the trigger. 

Let no one pass from big-gun teaching to trigger- 
teaching with the idea that the latter will prove the 
easier. It is far more difficult to make the cartridge 
83 



Sunday-School Success 

than to pick up and carry the ball which the cartridge 
would propel ; but, for effective and profitable teach- 
ing, better ten minutes' work done by the class than 
an hour's work done by you in the presence of the 
class, even though to do the latter is far easier than 
to elicit the former. 

If— as those who have been doing it all themselves 
will doubtless find it— this trigger-teaching comes 
especially hard at first, let them begin with getting 
their scholars to do something at first hand, though 
only a little, and let them work their way slowly to 
the pedagogical perfection of getting their scholars 
to do everything. 

And does any one fear that this will destroy the 
personality and personal influence of the teacher? 
On the contrary, the trigger-teacher has to put ten 
times more of himself into every lesson than the big- 
gun teacher. The scholars get more of his personality, 
at the same time that they are gloriously, though 
unconsciously, developing their own. 



8 4 



Chapter XIV 
Galvanic Teaching 

In his exceedingly suggestive book entitled " Be- 
fore an Audience " Mr. Shepard insists strenuously 
on what he calls " physical earnestness " in a speaker. 
It is not meant by this that we are to go before our 
scholars with our nerves a-quiver, with headaches 
coming on, with our brains throbbing and our muscles 
drawn tight. A speaker must be, as Mr. Shepard 
insists, an animal galvanic battery on two legs. He 
must be at something corresponding to electric ten- 
sion. He must be in earnest with his body, not lazy 
with it. No teacher who is not spirited will succeed 
with children, or with any one, long. 

Nothing will more quickly win and permanently 
hold a child's attention than earnestness. Children's 
capacity for serious thinking is greatly undervalued. 
There is more philosophy in them than you dream of. 
They are very much in earnest themselves, and they 
rejoice to see other people very much in earnest. 

I do not mean by this that one should always be 
85 



Sunday-School Success 

serious with them. Nothing will gain their attention 
more than a joke; but joking with children is as 
dangerous as feeding them candy. They have no 
more taste henceforth for anything else, and to keep 
their attention you must continue to feed them candy 
and deal out jokes. The most successful teachers of 
children, judging not by the interest of the children so 
much as by permanent spiritual results, are those that 
are always deeply in earnest ; and yet their earnest- 
ness is shot through and through with the sunshine. 

The intensity I am advocating must not be the 
intensity of an auger, that bores. Oh, if teachers 
only knew enough not to teach too much! If one 
good idea is got into the heads of the children as the 
result of the lesson half-hour, then you have scored 
a victory. If you try to get in eight good ideas, you 
will not score one-eighth of a victory. Some teachers 
that I know want to get the whole body of theology 
and the entire system of ethics into each lesson. 
They skip with haste from truth to mighty truth, 
crowding into a lesson twenty weighty points, each 
one of which would be amply sufficient for the half- 
hour. The result is an impossibility of attention, for 
not enough is given about any one thing to fix it and 
hold it down. 

Our Sunday-school teaching reminds me some- 
times of a daily paper — all cut up into paragraphic 
articles ; and if there is any topic of universal know- 
ledge omitted, it will appear in the evening edition. 
A confirmed newspaper reader has become incapable 
86 



Galvanic Teaching 

of following an extended discussion, or of reading a 
book. I have stood before Sunday-school classes to 
which their teacher was in the habit of propounding 
a series of disconnected questions from a book or 
paper, and I have found it quite impossible to hold 
the attention of such classes for any length of time 
on one matter. They were anxious for another para- 
graph, for fresh head-lines, for a change of subject. 

Most Sunday-school lessons are fruitful of multi- 
tudinous suggestions. Let us not teach so much that 
we teach nothing, or, worse than nothing, instruct in 
mental dissipation instead of mental concentration. 
We prepare for teaching with the lesson hour in view ; 
we should rather have in view the hour following the 
lesson hour. What impression do we intend the les- 
son to make? How are we going to make the lesson 
stand out in relief? 

I must now set off against the law of intensity the 
complementary law of motion. A mesmeric patient 
is sent into the hypnotic trance by continued staring 
at the same stationary object. This looks like per- 
fect attention, but it results in sleep. There is a 
verbal hypnotism that is very common when teachers 
are trying to impress an idea by holding it up stolidly 
and persistently before the eyes of their scholars. 
That is not what I mean by intensity, and it is one 
of the commonest ways of destroying attention. 

If you are anxious to impress a truth and yet hold 
attention, you must do it by presenting now this side 
of the truth and now that, now with parable and now 
87 



Sunday-School Success 

with allegory, now with appeal and now with testi- 
mony, experience, quotation, objects. Arrived at the 
end, do not press the point against the scholars and 
stick it into them, but if they do not see it, go back 
and pass over the matter in a different way. 

Moving bodies draw and hold the eye. Every one 
must look at a shooting star, a jumping horse, a run- 
^/ ning man, a flying bird, a rising kite. To keep atten- 
tion, our lessons must have what the critics of novels 
call " movement." There is to be no still life in our 
pictures. Everything must be stirring, dramatic. 

An accomplished teacher must have the power of 
painting word -pictures. It is not a difficult art. 
Hard study and zealous "putting yourself in his 
place" will accomplish it. Some way or other we 
must get the persons of the lesson clearly before our 
scholars' eyes, the scenes as if the scholars were sur- 
rounded by them, if we would maintain their atten- 
tion. And even if the lesson is impersonal, we must 
dramatize it, we must invent situations and persons 
to illustrate the abstract thought, or we must draw 
illustrations from real history. These must all be 
real to us, or they will never be real to our scholars. 
Pictures always hold the attention of children. Let us 
remember this when we talk to them. Children are 
fond of motion. Let our teaching move briskly, then. 



Chapter XV 
Serial Teaching 

There are short-story writers who are able to hold 
our attention charmingly for an episode, and there are 
other minds which are able to lead us entranced 
through the varied scenes of a long serial. So also 
there is short-story Sunday-school teaching and serial 
Sunday-school teaching. Short-story teaching treats 
each lesson as a separate unit; serial teaching con- 
siders each lesson a part only of a great, united whole. 

Short-story teaching is far easier than serial teach- 
ing. It is concerned with but one set of circum- 
stances, persons, and principles. For the serial 
teacher, on the contrary, every lesson must include a 
review and a prospectus. He must learn to see 
things in their relations. He must have a good 
memory, and a better imagination, to make his 
memory buoyant. This is not easy j and therefore it 
is that short-story teaching is much commoner than 
serial teaching. 

And yet serial teaching is the right kind of teach- 
89 



Sunday-School Success 

ing, for the following reasons. Just as a fine serial 
story adds to the enthusiasm for good numbers of a 
periodical, and tides over poor numbers, so, if you can 
get up a serial interest in your teaching, it will increase 
the interest of the good days, and will tide over with 
full seats and bright eyes the rainy, or cold, or hot, or 
sleepy days. 

Besides, Christianity is a whole, and each of its 
many parts interdependent. We must not teach it, 
therefore, as if it were a patchwork, capable of being 
taken apart and put together as men will. We do 
wrong to the great system we teach, if our lessons do 
not leave the impression of a vast, coherent fabric, — 
too vast for one lesson to disclose, too coherent for 
one lesson to stand out apart. 

Besides, however our lessons may change, our 
scholars are still the same ; and this continuity of 
listeners should impart a serial interest to the teach- 
ing. Cause the scholars to feel that each lesson is to 
make definite contribution to their growth in know- 
ledge and character. It won't hurt them if they are 
as mechanical about it as Peter, and enumerate, les- 
son after lesson, as in the apostle's famous addition- 
table, the virtues those lessons may add to their lives. 

For these three reasons, then, our teaching should 
contain some strong element of serial interest. Many 
teachers err in using only one sort of connecting link, 
year in, year out, and are as likely to fail as the 
periodical which always prints serial stories of the 
same kind of plot, scenes, and characters. I will 
90 



Serial Teaching 

mention several serial elements which a wise teacher 
will use in turn, holding to one long enough for prof- 
it, but not too long for interest. 

In the first place, it is often well to make the serial 
biographical. Your serial has then a hero. Moses, 
Joshua, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, 
Daniel, John, Peter, Paul, Mary, — what glorious 
groups of chapters these names bind together! If 
we are zealous, patient, and imaginative, we can easily, 
with this magnificent material, construct for our 
classes serials whose absorbing interest will vie with 
any in their pet weekly story-paper. We can lead 
them to eager study of a man's development in char- 
acter and in fortune. 

At other times it is better to trust for the serial in- 
terest to history, — to study the evolution of a nation 
as before of a man. The wondrous tale of the rise 
of the Hebrews from Abraham, their metamorphosis 
under Moses, their consolidation under judges, their 
expansion under kings, their division, their downfall, 
their restoration, their subjugation, their new birth in 
Him who was before Abraham, — this story may be 
made to have a deep and constant serial interest. 

Of course, with either the biographical or historical 
serial plan, great pains must be taken with that bug- 
bear of the average teacher, — what the lesson-helps 
call intervening events, but many a scholar calls in- 
tervening mystifications. Often fully half the lesson- 
time should be given to them. Usually the antecedents 
they contain are absolutely necessary for an under- 
9i 



Sunday-School Success 

standing of the lesson, — text, persons, and principles. 
With them you teach history; without, episodes. 
They mean work, to be sure ; but all unifying and 
solidifying means work. 

At still other times or with other classes it is well 
to let the serial interest center around principles. 
Treat one group of lessons as illustrating the manly 
or unmanly qualities; consider another group pri- 
marily as a commentary on truth and falsehood ; let 
your binding topic for another set be " What is True 
Religion?" "Sin and Salvation," " Serving and 
Served," " Success and Failure," — how many lessons 
could be clustered naturally about these topics! 
Children are characteristically philosophers, and a 
treatment of Sunday-school lessons as illustrating 
different phases of some great truth is a method very 
attractive to them. "What does the Bible teach 
about truth-telling, about penalty for sin, about the 
conditions of happiness?" Sunday-school scholars 
should be ready to answer such questions, not by 
haphazard impromptus, but by a careful presentation 
of events, characters, and sayings bearing on each 
point, and representing the whole Bible. 

Another excellent way of binding lessons together 
is by the scholars themselves. As I said, however the 
lessons change, the scholars remain the same, with the 
same prominent troubles, faults, and needs. Both 
they and you should know what these are. I often 
have scholars who bring up, Sunday after Sunday, in 
connection with topics the most diverse, the same 
92 



Serial Teaching 

questions, which are evidently stumbling-blocks to 
their minds and lives. These are usually practical 
matters wherein the Christian imperatives are strangely 
incongruous with worldly habits, such as the choice 
of a calling, absolute frankness of speech, public tes- 
timony for Christ, the careful observance of the Sab- 
bath, sharp competition in trade. These are too big 
questions to be settled in a few minutes, and young 
folks who are seized by them in earnest have found 
for themselves a serial interest which will last for 
some time. 

If we cannot take advantage of such a linking 
which our scholars discover for themselves, we can 
always bind lessons together by our own knowledge 
of our scholars' needs. If you have a young man in 
your class to whom the skepticism of the times is 
alluring, let him find something faith-inspiring and 
confirmatory of belief in every lesson. If you have 
a young girl burdened with sick-room duties and home 
cares beyond her strength, let her know that each 
lesson will bring her fresh energy and comfort. You 
need not tell your scholars that you know their strug- 
gles. Enough that you do know them, and link lesson 
to lesson for them in sweet chains of love and help- 
fulness. 

When, by any of the four methods I have outlined, 
you thus establish a bond between your lessons, you 
have gained two great advantages besides the serial 
interest which you have aroused. In the first place, 
you study the Bible as a whole, not by extracts. 
93 



Sunday-School Success 

You learn to interpret one portion by another. You 
find out the fallacy of fragments. You perceive that 
Christianity is a system, and not an anthology. In 
the second place, you have solved the review problem, 
for every lesson is now a review. If you were re- 
quired to remember, in order, twelve words chosen at 
random, you would find it somewhat difficult ; but it 
would be easy enough if those twelve words were ar- 
ranged in a sentence. Serial teaching is building up 
a sentence, and the review is merely repeating that 
sentence. A serial teacher has no fear of review day. 
The short-story teacher is compelled to find for that 
day a new short story. 

Now, have I not reserved mention of the one great 
tie of all our teaching? Whether Old Testament or 
New, history, prophecy, proverbs, or psalms, it is all 
one continued story, and the hero is Christ. By what- 
ever unifying principle we group our lessons together, 
Christ unifies the groups. Year in, year out, if Christ 
is at the heart of our teaching, that teaching is consec- 
utive, serial, solid. Without him, it is disjointed, frag- 
mentary, frail. Not retracting a word I have written 
about the value of these other methods of arousing 
continued interest, yet it must be said that they are all 
worthless without Christ. In him each several build- 
ing, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple 
in the Lord. 



94 



Chapter XVI 
Teaching the Psalms 

The Lesson Committee often assigns us two or 
three lessons in a book, and from these few lessons the 
scholars must get some comprehensive knowledge of 
the entire book. A book study, therefore, will not be 
out of place in this series of suggestions to teachers, 
and I have chosen the Psalms, since they are likely 
to be most fruitful of hints as to the teaching of other 
books. 

A systematic knowledge of the Psalms is rarely 
sought after. Only one book of the Bible is more 
loved : the Gospel of John ; only one is read less 
methodically : the Book of Proverbs. 

It is the fault of many teachers that they teach all 
books of the Bible in the same way. Prophecy, his- 
tory, poetry, prose, Ruth and Revelation, John and 
Judges, — it is all one to them. The Psalms, like all 
other books of the Bible, are unique, and need their 
own especial mode of treatment. Here are some hints 
concerning this treatment. 
95 



Sunday-School Success 

Get first, from the Revised Version, a comprehen- 
sive idea of the five Books of Psalms, with their similar 
endings. Note their length and the total number of 
psalms. From the Bible dictionary learn what you 
can about the time when these books were collected, 
and the probable authors of the anonymous psalms. 

Study the psalms by types. We have the First 
Psalm, which contrasts the good and evil. Psalms 
of the Good are i, 26, 41, 72, 94, 101, 126, 127, 
128, 144. Psalms of the Evil are 10, 14, 36, 37, 
49,52,53, 58,64,73,82, 109, 129,140. The Second 
is a Psalm of Power. Others are 11, 21, 24, 29, 47, 
48, 60, 76, 77, S3, 97, 108, in, 114, 139. The 
Nineteenth and the One Hundred and Third are 
Psalms of Praise. With these study 8, 9, 18, 30, 
33, 34, 44, 65, 66, 67, 68, 75, 85, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 
96, 98, 99, 100, 104, 105, 106, 107, 112, 113, 117, 
118, 134, 135, 136, 138, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 
150. The Second and the Seventy-second are 
Messianic Psalms. So also are Psalms 45 and no. 
The Twenty-third is a Psalm of Trust. Similar psalms 
are 4, 7, 16, 27, 31, 56, 62, 71, 91, 125, 131. The 
Fifty-first is a Psalm of Forgiveness. Such, too, are 
25, 32, 39, 40, 80, 81. With Psalm 84, a Psalm of 
Worship, go 15, 42, 50, 57, 63, 87, 115, 122, 132, 
133. Besides these, the following may be classified 
as Psalms of Help: 3, 12, 20, 35, 43, 4 6 , 59, 6l , 
70, 79, 121, 1 24 ; the following as Psalms of Sorrow : 
6, 13, 22, 38, 55, 69, 74, 88, 102, 120, 137, 143 ; and 
the following as Psalms of Prayer: 5, 17, 28, 54, 
96 



Teaching the Psalms 

86, n6, 123, 130, 141, 142. Psalms 78 and 119 are 
Psalms of the Law. Of course, this is only a rough 
classification of the psalms. It will be a pleasant and 
valuable task for you to classify them more elaborately. 

Read again the life of David, found in the passage 
from 1 Samuel 16:1 to 1 Kings 2:11. In connec- 
tion with each psalm you read, think what may have 
been the king's fortunes when he wrote it, or what 
experience of his may have prompted it. This psalm 
of sorrow may have had birth in Absalom's revolt ; 
this song of trust may have welled from a rock of 
hiding in the desert ; this hymn of triumphant strain 
may have celebrated some victory over Saul or the 
Syrians ; this pleading for forgiveness may have been 
a wail over Uriah. 

The psalms are all dramatic. Here, more than any- 
where in the study of the Bible, you need to use imag- 
ination, to "put yourself in his place." The psalms 
are in the first person. Fancy yourself the psalmist 
as you read his songs. Pray his prayers, exult in his 
praise, beat your breast with his agony of shame, be 
calm in his assurance of forgiveness and peace. 

In like manner, as you prepare to teach, fancy times 
in your scholars' lives to which these psalms will apply, 
times when it would be well for them to sing these 
psalms, and teach with these times in clear view. 

Be sure thus to translate David's experience into 

that of your scholars. These psalms are of universal 

moment, as they come so directly from David's heart, 

and God's; and yet they need this translation, be- 

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Sunday-School Success 

cause David's surroundings were not ours. His foes, 
his sins, his exiles, his triumphs, were not ours in form, 
however much the same in reality. 

There are frequent quotations of the psalms to be 
found in the later books of the Bible. These, espe- 
cially those made by Christ and the apostles, consti- 
tute a priceless commentary. Search for them with 
the help of a concordance or a reference Bible. 

Aside from this, the psalms are especially fit for 
illustrative quotations, and the children may be in- 
spired to gather them eagerly. Assign to each scholar 
a verse for illustration from some other part of the 
Bible, in some such way as this : 
" The Lord is my shepherd." 

11 1 am the good shepherd. The good shepherd 
layeth down his life for the sheep" (John 10: u). 
" I shall not want." 

" Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need 
of all these things. But seek ye first his kingdom 
and his righteousness, and all these things shall 
be added unto you " (Matt. 7:32, 33). 
"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures." 

" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest " (Matt. 11 : 28). 
" He leadeth me beside the still waters." 

" Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall 
give him shall become in him a well of water, 
springing up unto eternal life " (John 4 : 14). 
98 



Teaching the Psalms 

" He restoreth my soul" 

" I am the resurrection and the life " (John 1 1 : 25). 
" He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his 
name's sake." 
" I am the way, and the truth, and the life : no 
one cometh unto the Father, but by me " (John 
14:6). 
11 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
of death, I will fear 110 evil." 
" Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never 
die" (John 11 : 26). 
" For thou art with me." 

" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
the world" (Matt. 28: 20). 
" Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." 

"I will pray the Father, and he shall give you 
another Comforter, that he may be with you for- 
ever, even the Spirit of truth " (John 14 : 16, 17). 
" Thou prepares t a table before me in the presence of 
mine enemies." 
" I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me 
shall not hunger " (John 6 : 35). 
" Thou a?iointest my head with oil." 

" Grace and peace . . . from Jesus the anointed, 
. . . who has made us to be kings and priests 
unto his God and Father " (Rev. 1 : 4-6). 
" My cup ruimeth over." 

" The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a par- 
ticipation in the blood of Christ? " (1 Cor. 10 : 16.) 
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Sunday-School Success 

" Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the 
days of my life." 

"These things have I spoken unto you, that my 
joy may be in you, and that your joy may be 
fulfilled" (John 15: 11). 
" And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." 

" In my Father's house are many abiding-places. 
... I go to prepare a place for you " (John 
14: 2). 

In preparing for this exercise the children will learn 
how to use the Bible index and the concordance. 

Watch the paragraphs of the Revised Version. 
They make useful indications of the passage from one 
thought to the other. 

The psalms lend themselves well to the useful ex- 
ercises of analysis, condensation, and paraphrase. 
Get your scholars to write out for you, one, a brief 
tabular statement of the contents of the psalm; 
another, the thought of the psalm in words of his 
own ; a third, the substance of the psalm, with all 
superfluous words and repetitions omitted. 

It is a capital plan to underscore in your Bibles, 
and get your scholars in the course of the lesson to 
underscore in theirs, the key-sentences of the psalm. 
In the First Psalm, for instance, you have in bold re- 
lief the main thought of the six verses if you under- 
score " Blessed is the man that walketh not in the 
counsel of the wicked. Whatsoever he doeth shall 
prosper. The wicked are not so." There is your 
outline. 



Teaching the Psalms 

Do not rest satisfied until, for your scholars and for 
you, the psalm you are studying is a unit, and stands 
out in your minds with clear-cut individuality. It is 
especially necessary to get through with the entire 
text when your lesson is in the Psalms. It is not like 
a series of disconnected proverbs : it is a picture ; and 
your understanding of it will lack some essential part 
until you have all the verses. 

Indeed, I would go over each psalm with the class 
at least five times, rapidly : first, to remove stumbling- 
blocks of strange customs and expressions; second, 
to grasp the general thought ; third, to get its appli- 
cation to David's life ; fourth, to get its lesson for our 
lives; fifth, a verse-by-verse study for all possible 
side-lights and instruction. 

Observe the parallel expressions. Use only the 
Revised Version, which correctly prints the psalms 
as poetry. Read them rhythmically ; chant them ; 
intone them ; get the impression of songs. Come to 
feel the beauty and meaning of the frequent refrains. 

Go on a tour of discovery, seeking for the noble 
metrical translations of these psalms found in our 
hymn-books and religious anthologies. For Psalm 
19 read Addison's magnificent hymn, "The spacious 
firmament on high"; for Psalm 103, H. F. Lyte's 
" Praise, my soul, the King of heaven," or Isaac 
Watts' " My soul, repeat His praise " ; for Psalm 
72, James Montgomery's "Hail to the Lord's 
Anointed, great David's greater Son! " or Isaac Watts' 
" Jesus shall reign where'er the sun does his succes- 

IOI 



Sunday-School Success 

sive journeys run"; for Psalm 84, H. F. Lyte's 
" Pleasant are Thy courts above," or Isaac Watts' 
"Lord of the worlds above"; for Psalm 23, Addi- 
son's " The Lord my pasture shall prepare," or others 
more familiar ; and for other psalms the same writers, 
with Wesley, John Newton, Scott, and many more. 
Your scholars will be interested in searching for these, 
and bringing them in. 

Suppose we were studying an English hymn-book. 
What would we ask first about each hymn? We 
would ask what sentiment it was capable of inspiring. 
The same question is to be asked about these inspired 
hymns ; and throughout each of them we are to trace 
not so much a train of thought as a train of feeling. 

The psalms are subjective, and for that reason are 
particularly hard, some of them, for children to appre- 
ciate. We must interpret them all the more thoroughly 
by objective illustrations. Here the ordinary prob- 
lem is reversed. In our ordinary lessons the exam- 
ple from real life is given, and from it the teacher 
must draw spiritual lessons. Here the spiritual med- 
itation is given, to be applied to real life. 

Notwithstanding this, the psalms are eminently 
pictorial, and especially adapted to illustration. See 
how many pictures are suggested by the following 
words from the most famous of the psalms: "shep- 
herd," "want," "lie down," " green pastures," "lead- 
eth," "still waters," " guideth," "paths," "valley of 
the shadow," "rod and staff," "a table prepared," 
"enemies," "anointed," "cup runneth over." All 
102 



Teaching the Psalms 

such pictures should be gathered, and used to make 
the lesson vivid to the picture-loving little ones. 

There is especial need in teaching the psalms to 
explain how the force of imagery varies with varying 
conditions of climate and modes of life ; how much 
more, for instance, was meant to David than to us 
by such symbols as "a rock," "shadow," "sun," 
" shield," " water-courses " ! 

Children are fond of metaphors, but they make 
comical blunders with them, and deal, unless we are 
careful, all too literally with such passages as " a table 
in the presence of mine enemies," "the wicked are 
like the chaff," " the congregation of the righteous," 
"break them with a rod of iron." If the teacher is 
in doubt just how far to carry these metaphors, I know 
no better example of the wise and beautiful use of 
them than Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress." The read- 
ing of that book will make a capital preparation for 
the teaching of the psalms. 

Few lessons in the seven years' course will be so 
admirable as these for committing to memory. If 
you want to inspire your class to better work in that 
line, now is your time. 

Note that the psalms are all optimistic. Sound their 
key-note of peace and joy. 

Here, if anywhere in the Bible, spiritual teaching 
is needed. An essential part of the preparation for 
teaching the psalms is devout prayer. 



103 



Chapter XVII 
Those Temperance and Missionary Lessons 

Intemperance is the church's greatest foe, mis- 
sions her greatest task. Around these two topics 
cluster the highest chivalry, the most splendid ro- 
mance, of our modern world. The shout of the battle 
is in them, the sweep of the regiment. No lessons 
are more important than those devoted to these two 
great themes, and none can be made more interesting. 

And yet to many a teacher they are bugbears. To 
these eight lessons — one sixth of the whole — they go 
with dull hearts. They do wish the Lesson Com- 
mittee would leave them out of the list. 

What is the trouble? There is no life back of the 
lesson. They have " got up " their lesson as best 
they can ; but a lesson is not got up, it grows up. 
They do not know enough about missions and the 
temperance reform to be interested in them. No 
information, no inspiration. 

To be sure, there are few passages in the Bible 
suitable for use in temperance lessons, and but few 
104 



Those Temperance and Missionary Lessons 

referring directly to such enterprises as modern mis- 
sions. The Acts record merely the beginnings of 
missions, and intemperance was scarcely a problem 
in New Testament days. Nevertheless, both tem- 
perance and missions find in the Book their funda- 
mental and sufficient inspiration ; and taking our 
starting-point from the lesson text, we may fairly 
launch forth into seas as wide as the world of men 
and action. 

Indeed, so multiform are the phases of these two 
topics that to avoid confusion and leave clear im- 
pressions every temperance or missionary lesson 
should have a specialty. Let me indicate a few of 
the many possible themes. 

i. A Bible Search. — Spend the hour hunting out 
everything the Bible says upon temperance, or all the 
leading passages bearing on missions. The scholars 
will read them aloud. Some verses they will repeat 
from memory. They will mark them with colored 
pencils in their Bibles. They will discover the cen- 
tral thought in each reference and write it on the 
blackboard, thus building up a compact summary. 
The exercise has an air of finality that will please 
the scholars. 

2. A Biographical Lesson. — Let everything cluster 
around some great leader in missions or the temper- 
ance reform. For the latter, select John B. Gough, 
Miss Willard, Lady Henry Somerset, Father Mathew, 
Francis Murphy. For the great missionaries, — India : 
Carey, Heber, Martyn ; Burmah : Judson ; China : 
105 



Sunday-School Success 

Nevius, Morrison, Gilmour; Japan: Neesima; Oce- 
anica : Coan, Paton, Patteson ; America : Gardiner, 
Eliot, Whitman, Brainerd; Turkey: Schauffler, 
D wight, Hamlin ; Africa : Livingstone, Mackay, Mof- 
fat, Taylor, Hannington. There is material enough 
for a lifetime of teaching! 

Get as many scholars as possible to read before- 
hand in the encyclopedia a short account of the chosen 
life. One of the class may write a five-minute essay 
upon the hero. Characteristic anecdotes concerning 
him may be distributed among the scholars for each 
to relate. No better series of short missionary biog- 
raphies was ever published than that sold by the 
publishers of this book at the low price of 50 or 75 
cents a volume. Use them. If the class during the 
hour can really make the acquaintance of a great 
missionary or reformer, it will be vast gain. 

Another and most profitable kind of biographical 
meeting may be based, not upon single lives, but 
upon a group of lives. Study " The Great Mission- 
aries of the Bible," " Bible Heroes of Temperance," 
" Some Noble Lives Spoiled by Intemperance," 
" Some Magnificent Missionaries of Our Denomi- 
nation." 

3. An Historical Lesson. — The temperance reform 
has already a notable history, with many chapters 
worth careful study. Spend an hour with the Wo- 
man's Crusade,— its origin, its leaders, its many thrill- 
ing scenes, its notable results. The Washingtonian 
movement, the blue-ribbon movement, the World's 
106 



Those Temperance and Missionary Lessons 

Petition, "temperance in the White House/' — these 
are themes for other studies. 

And as for missions, the puzzle will be to know 
where to end, when there are, for instance, the " Se- 
rampore Brotherhood" to study, the "Lone Star" 
mission, the Madagascar martyrs, the China Inland 
Mission, the all-but-miracle of Metlakahtla, the con- 
quest of Hawaii, the transformation of Fiji, the bloody 
chronicles of Uganda. With any one of these stories 
for a nucleus, your missionary lesson will be certain 
of leaving a deep impression. 

4. A?i Organization Lesson. — Study one or more 
of the great temperance organizations, — its origin, 
its noble leaders, its methods and aims, its practical 
results. The W. C. T. U. and the " Y's," the Good 
Templars, the National Temperance Society, the 
temperance work of Christian Endeavor societies, 
may be studied in this way. 

This plan is especially valuable for the missionary 
lessons, which should render your scholars familiar 
with the history and triumphs of each missionary 
board of your denomination, home and foreign. The 
remarkable circumstances of its founding, the heroic 
men and women it has sent forth (exhibit portraits), 
the places where it labors (show views), the periodicals 
it publishes (have samples to give away), a few round 
figures to set forth the results of it all, — that is a scanty 
outline. The larger work of the church would profit 
immensely by such use of an occasional missionary 
lesson. 

107 



Sunday-School Success 

5. A Newspaper Lesson. — In another chapter I 
discuss the use that may wisely be made of the news- 
paper in our Sunday-school teaching. Once in a 
while the specialty of a lesson may be a study of 
current events in their bearing on missions or on the 
temperance reform. 

Some temperance orator has made a noble speech 
which you find well reported. The W. C. T. U. has 
just held its annual convention. Neal Dow's birth- 
day has been widely celebrated. South Carolina has 
adopted its system of State dispensaries. A hot 
campaign for prohibition is in progress in Canada. 
The teacher that centers his lesson on one of these 
themes is sure of lively interest which may be led to 
practical result. 

Or, if it is missionary Sunday, let the teacher utilize 
the most absorbing topics of foreign news. It may 
be the Spanish seizure of the Caroline Islands, the 
French capture of Madagascar, the Japanese cam- 
paign in Formosa or that of the English in Matabele- 
land or the Soudan, the Italian war with Abyssinia, 
the Indian famine, the troubles in Crete, the massacres 
in Armenia. What scholar, after a lesson shrewdly 
introduced by such recitals, will fail to see that mis- 
sions are a topic very much alive? 

6. A Map Lesson. — Few things condense, com- 
bine, and clarify bits of information like a map, pro- 
vided you can put your information upon it. A map 
may be utilized in a temperance lesson in two good 
ways. If you are in a city, draw the streets of some 

108 



Those Temperance and Missionary Lessons 

section, or of the entire city, if possible. Send your 
scholars out along all streets, dividing them up, and 
have them count the saloons in each block, locating 
also the churches and schoolhouses. I suppose, of 
course, that your scholars are of suitable age for this 
work. Next Sunday, as they report, put a black spot 
on the map for every saloon, and a blue spot for 
every church and schoolhouse. Your map will point 
its own moral. 

At another time draw a map of the United States, 
and give a graphic view of the temperance laws of 
the land, coloring the prohibition States one color, 
using a different color to designate the Massachusetts 
plan, the South Carolina plan, and so on. 

More can be done with a map in a missionary lesson. 
For instance, you may select a single country, say 
India. Provide " stickers " of bright-colored paper. 
Let some be large and circular. As you talk about 
the four or five great languages of that many-tongued 
empire, get the scholars to fasten these " stickers " in 
the centers of the various language areas. Let other 
" stickers " be cut into small stars. Three of these, 
of one color, fastened in the neighborhoods of Bom- 
bay, Madura, and Ceylon, will represent the Congre- 
gational missions. In the same way you will show 
the location of the Baptist, Methodist, and Presby- 
terian missions and those of other denominations. 
Population " stickers " may also be used, and " stick- 
ers " with the names of great missionaries may show 
where they labored. 

109 



Sunday-School Success 

On another day you may take a map of the entire 
world, and thus indicate the location of all the mission 
fields of your denomination. If this map is kept be- 
fore the class from that time, every item of missionary 
information will have fresh interest and point. 

7. A Statistics Lesson. — At this lesson distribute, 
for the scholars to read aloud, slips of paper contain 
ing temperance or missionary statistics, — the numbers 
of saloons or missionaries, of drunkards dying or 
converts made each day, the cost of missions or of 
strong drink compared with other expenditures, and 
the like. Get the class to cut strips of paper of vari- 
ous lengths to represent graphically the comparative 
costs. Drill the scholars in temperance or missionary 
arithmetic. Telling them the number of heathen in 
China, ask how long a procession they would make, 
marching in single file one foot apart. Giving them 
the liquor expenditure for a year, have them measure 
a pile of silver dollars and calculate how tall a pile 
would equal the annual cost of drink. Such books 
as "The Missionary Pastor," published by the Flem- 
ing H. Revell Company, and " Weapons for Temper- 
ance Warfare" and "Fuel for Missionary Fires," 
published by the United Society of Christian En- 
deavor, will suggest many similar exercises. 

8. A Quotations Lesson. — The teacher holds in his 
hand a bunch of papers, on each of which is written 
an interesting quotation bearing on missions or tem- 
perance. The collection will include longer anecdotes 
as well as brisk sentences. Many will bear famous 



Those Temperance and Missionary Lessons 

names. Each scholar will choose a quotation at 
random and read it aloud. The teacher will draw 
out its meaning by questions, will add illustrations 
and practical comments, will tell something about 
the author of the quotation, or will show the connec- 
tion of the thought or anecdote with the day's lesson. 
In some classes the scholars themselves may be trusted 
to bring their own quotations or anecdotes. 

Let me mention briefly a few more devices out of 
the many that may add interest to these lessons. Get 
a trained worker along temperance or missionary 
lines to come in and address the class. Carry out a 
series of simple experiments showing the physiological 
effects of alcohol. Make a study of the best mis- 
sionary hymns, their authors, and the events that 
prompted them. Try a fifteen-minute debate on some 
missionary or temperance topic. Get the scholars 
now and then to write five-minute essays or give five- 
minute talks on appropriate themes. Let one edit a 
temperance or missionary paper, — in manuscript, of 
course, — collecting contributions from each scholar, 
and reading the result before the class as a sample 
number of the " Cold Water Herald " or the " Mis- 
sionary Monitor." Some Sunday, call on every mem- 
ber of the class to sign the pledge. On a mission 
Sabbath make an appeal for tithe-giving and present 
a tithe-givers' pledge. Give the wonderful history 
of the Student Volunteer movement, and urge the 
scholars to consider the mission field as a possibility 
for each one of them. Enliven some missionary lesson 



Sunday-School Success 

with entertaining accounts of the strange customs of 
the country under discussion, and get together all the 
illustrative material you and your scholars can find. 
The Sunday-school and the Christian Endeavor so- 
ciety will do well to make a collection of curios for 
such purposes. 

It is an admirable plan to set each of your scholars 
to doing some steady work in preparation for these 
lessons. One may watch the newspapers and collect 
temperance facts and illustrations of the evils of 
strong drink. The various missionary societies of the 
denomination may be divided among the scholars, 
each to gather interesting bits concerning the work 
of the board assigned to him. In the same way the 
mission lands may be apportioned out, and "the 
gentleman from India " or " our representative in 
China " be called upon to report the latest news from 
his field. In this plan the children will cooperate 
very zealously. 

Of course it goes without saying {does it, though?) 
that each teacher will be a subscriber to the mission- 
ary magazines of his own denomination, as well as to 
that common denominator of all the missionary mag- 
azines, the " Missionary Review of the World." 

He will also take, if possible, a good temperance 
paper, such as the " Union Signal " or the " National 
Temperance Advocate " ; and if he can afford them, 
he will not be without the temperance and missionary 
encyclopedias. 

Indeed, the theme branches out into channels so 

112 



Those Temperance and Missionary Lessons 

many and so wide that, when once the teacher is 
started upon them, his greatest lack will be of time 
for exploration ; and so far from desiring the tem- 
perance and missionary lessons fewer than eight, he 
will wish it were possible for them to come every 
month ! 



"3 



Chapter XVIII 
Topical Lessons 

The Bible is so full of suggestion that it is impos- 
sible, in the brief Sunday-school half-hour, to view 
the many fields of thought opened before us with any 
degree of satisfying completeness. That fact, indeed, 
constitutes one of the greatest satisfactions of the 
Book. 

Neither teacher nor scholar can go very far with 
earnestness in Bible study without feeling an intense 
desire to collate and compare, to go to the bottom, 
to take views single in purpose, but wide in reach. 
This wish to read the Scriptures as a whole has ever 
been held a sign of healthful growth in Christian en- 
deavor. How may we encourage and satisfy this 
desire? Here is a method I have repeatedly found 
helpful to my class and myself. 

I prepare for myself what I call topical lessons. I 

have noticed especial interest in some one topic, — the 

use of Sunday, say, or future punishment, heaven, 

prayer, abuse of money, missions, the nature of sin. 

114 



Topical Lessons 

On some Sunday, then, I announce that one of these 
topics is to be discussed at next week's meeting. I 
ask the scholars to think the matter over, and look 
up texts. Some do, some do not, as is usual in such 
matters. Sunday come, I have in large script, pinned 
to the wall in view of the class, an outline of the 
topic chosen, with the texts to be used indicated in 
clear figures. It is intended for a lesson in methods 
of Bible study as much as in Bible contents, and so 
aims to be complete and thorough in its range. The 
plan is explained, and the scope of the subject. We 
take it up by natural divisions. 

All have Bibles, of course. The references are 
numbered. " Mr. Brown, please find No. i ; Mr. 
Jones, No. 2 ; Mr. Robinson, No. 3," and so on. 
In a few seconds we are ready for a discussion of the 
first division. I shall trust to the scholars' memory 
for the commoner quotations, and not trust in vain, 
if I have done my duty previously. This division 
disposed of, more or less to our satisfaction, we pass 
to another point, then to another, rapidly or leisurely, 
as the time permits, being careful that in the half-hour 
the general scope of Bible thought in the matter, its 
largeness and depth, its insight and minuteness of 
detail, be adequately exhibited. 

May I show you a sample outline? 

FAITH. 

1. What is it? (Heb. 11 : 1 ; John 20: 29.) 

2. Whence comes it? 

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Sunday-School Success 

(a) From God (Rom. 12:3; 1 Cor. 2:4, 5 ; 

12:4, 8, 9; 1 Pet. 1: 4, 5). 

(b) From Christ (Heb. 12:2). 

(c) From the Bible (John 17 : 20 ; 20 : 31 ; Rom. 

15: 4; 2 Tim. 3: 15). 

(d) From preaching (Rom. 10 : 14 ; 1 Cor. 3:5). 

(e) But all one (Eph. 4:554:13; Jude 3). 
(/) Not from works (Eph. 2:8, 9 ; Rom. 3 : 

27, 28; Gal. 3: 11, 12; 2: 16). 
What does it do? 

( 1 ) The works of faith : 

(a) It is a work (John 6 : 28, 29 ; Rom. 4 : 5). 

(b) Which draws us to God (Rom. 5:1, 2 ; 

Eph. 3: 12; 3: 17; Jas. 1: 5, 6). 

(c) Thus pleasing him (Heb. 11:6). 

(d) Which frees us from sin (2 Pet. 1:5; Acts 

13: 38, 39; Rom. 3: 21, 26; Acts 15: 9). 

(e) Leads us into salvation (Mark 16 : 16 ; John 

1: 12, 13). 
(/) Conquers this world (1 John 5 : 4, 5). 
(g) Gives us peace therein (Eph. 6:16; Rom. 

5:1)- 

(h) And finally eternal life (Rom. 1:17; John 
3: 16; 3: 3 6). 

(2) The works from faith : 

(a) Faith alone is dead (Eph. 2: 10; Jas. 2 : 

14-26). 

(b) Faith a beginning (Jude 20; Col. 2 : 6, 7). 

(c) Of wondrous power (Mark 9 : 23 ; 11:22- 

24; Luke 17: 5, 6). 
116 



Topical Lessons 

(d) Working out through love ( i Thess. 5:8; 

1 Cor. 13:2; 13:13; Gal. 5:651 John 
3^ 23). 

(e) In miracle (Matt. 9: 22; 9 : 29 ; Luke 8: 

50 ; Acts 3 : 16). 
(/) In history (Heb. 1 1 : 32-34 ; Matt. 16 : 16 ; 
John 1 : 49 ; 1 1 : 25, 27 ; Acts 6:5; 8 : 

37; ": 24). 

4. Have I it? 

(a) There is false faith (1 Tim. 1 : 5). 

(b) The testing (2 Cor. 13:5; Jas. 1 : 3 ; 1 Pet. 

1 : 6, 7). 

(c) The seeking (Phil. 1:27; Jude 3). 

(d) The keeping (1 Cor. 16 : 13 ; Heb. 10 : 38 ; 

Col. 1:23; 1 Tim. 1:18, 19; 6:12; 
1 Pet. 5 : 8, 9). 

5. Now and hereafter (2 Cor. 5:751 Cor. 13 : 12). 

Manifestly, when this plan is carried out, there will 
be scant time for the regular lesson; probably no 
time at all. The next Sunday two lessons must be 
recited. But your topical study has grown out of 
the regular lessons, and in its turn will excite in them 
fresh interest. 

It is obvious that each teacher must choose his 
own topics and make his own outlines, suited to his 
own methods of thought, and to the age and intelli- 
gence of his class. The above was used in a class 
of young men, college students in part. Themes of 
an entirely different nature might well be chosen, — a 
117 



Sunday-School Success 

view of Christ's miracles or parables or sermons, of 
Old Testament miracles, or of sacred history in some 
one line. It might even be found profitable, as it 
surely would be interesting, to collate, arrange, and 
discuss Scripture references to the eye, the ear, birds, 
flowers, trumpets. To my mind, some such occa- 
sional excursion as this seems to lead the scholars, 
especially those approaching manhood and woman- 
hood, to a more comprehensive and methodical know- 
ledge of the riches of the best Book, and to one of 
the most resultful methods of studying it. 



Ii8 



Chapter XIX 

Introducing Thoughts 

A little child once declared that she liked a cer- 
tain sermon because there were so many " likes " in 
it. For the same reason, that same child would have 
liked Christ as a Sunday-school teacher. And we 
teachers will gain Christ's success in the same measure 
as we gain his power of putting the whole universe 
back of our thought. 

For a thought comes forcibly from our minds in 
proportion as we see its relatedness. If we have put 
it into connection with a score of things, that score 
get behind it and push. An unrelated thought comes 
as tamely from the mind as a Jack from its box when 
the spring is broken. And so when a Sunday-school 
teacher would present a truth, energetically, he must 
look all around the truth, crowd his mind with ap- 
plications of the truth, fall in love with its beauty 
from many points of view ; in brief, become thor- 
oughly acquainted with the truth, and its enthusi- 
astic friend. 

119 



Sunday-School Success 

How, now, shall we introduce the truth to the 
child? It is the manner of some to take the truth 
and the child, and bump heads together, — a process 
which very naturally develops a mutual shyness. 

The true teacher, on the contrary, is a skilled master 
of ceremonies. From the crowd of likenesses, illus- 
trations, and applications which have made him and 
the truth acquainted, he chooses one to go with it and 
act as mutual friend, to introduce the stranger thought 
to the child's mind, and put the two on easy terms 
together. 

He does not make the common mistake of send- 
ing along the entire crowd, so that the introduced is 
lost in the throng of masters of ceremonies, so that 
the truth is confused, and acquaintanceship embar- 
rassed by the parade of illustration. He knows that 
where one parable makes, two mar, and three ruin. 

Nor will the shrewd teacher ever attempt intro- 
duction by something other than a mutual friend of 
both parties, — the truth and the child's mind. The 
myth of Alcestis may be connected with your own 
thought of the resurrection, but it is itself a stranger 
to the child's mind. The true mutual friend would 
be the metamorphosis of the butterfly. 

Is that comparison stale? In seeking for fresh 
and brilliant illustrations, we are apt to forget that 
the longer the mutual friend has known both parties, 
the more apt will he be at furthering their acquain- 
tance. The butterfly is truly to us a trite illustration 
of the resurrection, but not to the child. 



Introducing Thoughts 

Do not push forward the thought first, and after a 
ten minutes' awkward, floundering parley between it 
and the child's mind, proceed to introduce them by 
your illustration. After two people have talked to- 
gether for ten minutes, they either need no introduc- 
tion by that time, or have destroyed the possibility 
of acquaintanceship. Illustration first. 

And after the introduction two mistakes may be 
made. The introducing illustration may keep on 
chattering, not allowing the truth and the mind of the 
child to say a word to each other. A master of cere- 
monies, who knows his business, knows when to draw 
quietly back, and leave the new acquaintanceship 
room to grow. The illustration is not the end, but 
the means. 

The other mistake is in allowing the mutual friend 
to withdraw abruptly, before the two, the stranger 
thought and the child's mind, have broken the ice. 
Let him stay and put in a clever word now and then, 
until the acquaintanceship can stand by itself. 

Nor is there any reason why, with every fresh truth, 
a fresh illustration should strut forward. Those so- 
cial assemblies are best managed which are planned 
by one wise woman, and permeated throughout by 
her thoughtfulness, words of tact, and shrewd bits of 
engineering. One mistress to a party, as one cook 
to the broth. And so if you can find one illustration 
which is on good terms with all the truths in the lesson, 
and familiar also to the child's mind, by all means 
let that one illustration hold sway, as a genial host, 

121 



Sunday-School Success 

throughout the entire half-hour, and associate the 
whole together. 

But when the illustration ceases to illustrate, part 
with it, regretfully but promptly ; as I, following my 
own advice, must here part with the illustration which 
has done duty hitherto. 

In this whole matter, as in all others, only pains- 
taking deserves or gains success. A genius for par- 
able is rare. Gift here means the poet's power, his 
breadth of vision, his depth of sympathy, his tact and 
sense of fitness. But though it is a poet's gift, it need 
not be born in one. How may we gain skill in 
illustration ? 

In the first place, by gaining knowledge. How 
can we expect Jewish history to seem real, isolated, 
as it so often is, from all other history? We, too, 
have a Father Abraham. Caesar crossed a river once, 
as, and yet not as, did Joshua. Compare Washing- 
ton's farewell address with Samuel's. And, too, with- 
out science, such sciences as geology and astronomy, 
a Sunday-school teacher is but half armed. How 
wonderfully and inspiringly God's two books supple- 
ment each other, no one can guess who has not put 
the two together. In brief, for the theme is infinite, 
almost any fact, once learned, has constant surprises 
of usefulness, and in no ways more frequently than 
this of illustration. 

In the next place, by gaining sympathy. No one 
can well use illustrations who is out of touch with his 
fellows. The best possible illumination of life ques- 

122 



Introducing Thoughts 

tions is the story of the lives around you,— their trials 
and triumphs. Do you know a child who has done 
a heroic deed, though quietly, for the Master? Have 
you a friend who has conquered some sore tempta- 
tion? Have you met a good man struggling against 
some inherited evil tendency? Have you knowledge 
of the disastrous results of some single life? Life 
comes closest to life, and experience furnishes the 
best similes. 

And then we may study books, and learn how 
effective writers have used illustrations. A note-book 
collection of these will be helpful, even though the 
making of it is the end of it ; for this study will help 
us toward the teacher's chief goal,— the power of 
putting things in the best way. 

The newspapers should be one of the most fruitful 
fields for the gleaning of illustrations; and so they 
will be, when they learn to chronicle the good as thor- 
oughly and brilliantly as they now chronicle the bad. 

Of course,— though an u of course" seldom prac- 
tically accepted, — a Bible character is the very best 
illustration of a Bible character, the Old Testament 
of the New, the last lesson of this, Moses of Paul, 
and Sinai of Hermon. 

And of course, too, — though again a belied "of 
course,"— the less the illustration given by the teacher, 
and the more given by the scholar in answer to ques- 
tions, the more vivid the impression. Too often we 
teachers smack our lips at the coming of the similes, 
and launch out into harangue. 
123 



Sunday-School Success 

Let us see in all this much more than a scheme of 
indirections. It is no easy task to find the best way 
into a child's mind, nor quite without pains and diffi- 
culty is the imitation of the Teacher who spoke many 
things in parables. 



124 



Chapter XX 
Illustrations and Applications 

Sunday-school teachers often make the mistake 
of confounding " lesson illustrations " with "practical 
applications." A lesson illustration is a picture of 
the truth you are studying as exemplified in spheres 
of life foreign to your scholars ; practical application 
pictures the truth in their own lives. In other words, 
a practical application is an illustration that the 
scholars can practice. The point I want to make is, 
that the practical application should be used, in our 
own precious half-hour, not to the exclusion of the 
lesson illustration, but largely predominating over it. 

For instance, if you were discussing the great cloud 
of invisible witnesses that compass us about, you 
might illustrate the truth by the famous story of Na- 
poleon's speech to the troops in Egypt, " From yon- 
der pyramids, my men, forty centuries look down 
upon us " ; but, if you have not time for both, a prac- 
tical application would be far better : " John, who is 
one of this great cloud of witnesses that is most ten- 
125 



Sunday-School Success 

derly and anxiously watching your life? " " My 
father." "And who, Harry, is among your invisible 
guardians? " " My mother." That is more forcible 
than " forty centuries." 

Again, one of the finest illustrations of devotion to 
principle is afforded by the conversion to the Baptist 
faith of one of our first American foreign missionaries, 
the immortal Judson, who, at the bidding of con- 
science and conviction, cast loose in mid-ocean from 
the only missionary society in America, and his only 
assured support. That is magnificent, but it is only 
an illustration, one needing to be translated into terms 
of child life thus : " Suppose you are in a school ex- 
amination, and your neighbor on one side hands you 
a bit of folded paper to pass to your neighbor on the 
other side, and you are pretty sure it is to help him 
cheat in the examination, and suppose the whole 
school will think you mean and stuck up if you refuse 
to pass the paper, what are you going to do? " That 
is a test of devotion to principle such as the child is 
likely to meet. 

To be sure, there are illustrations which come so 
close to average circumstances that they are also ap- 
plications. For instance, to take another great mis- 
sionary, William Carey, his boyish fall from the tree 
he was climbing, with the result of breaking his leg, 
and, on recovery, his immediate set-to at the same 
tree again ; his saying that his business was preaching 
the gospel, but that he cobbled shoes "to pay ex- 
penses " ; his bidding the Christians left at home to 
126 



Illustrations and Applications 

"hold the ropes while he went down," — all these are 
very practical illustrations, quite within the children's 
sphere, since it is well for them also to have grit even 
about tree-climbing, since they are to hold their or- 
dinary duties subordinate to their spiritual life, and 
since they have missionary money to spend and mis- 
sionary prayers to make. If, however, I were teaching 
the passage in the Acts that relates how the disciples 
had all things in common, though I might tell about 
the splendid carrying out of that principle in Carey's 
Serampore brotherhood, yet, if I had time for only 
the one, I should certainly prefer a practical applica- 
tion of the text to the sharing of apples and the 
lending of bicycles. 

It is helpful to a boy, of course, if he would culti- 
vate patience, to have before his eyes the picture of 
that cave looking out over Scottish hills and heather, 
and of the spider at the cave's mouth teaching its 
beautiful lesson to the Bruce within ; but the picture 
remains only a picture unless the spider of the boy's 
imagination is taught to run lines connecting every 
point of the picture with his geography lesson and 
his garden weeding. Far too many war stories are 
told in our Sunday-schools. They do not build up 
very rapidly the Christian soldier. Far too many 
illustrations are drawn from what is wrongly called 
the distinctive " heroic age " of the world. Not thus 
is the Christian hero furnished for his nineteenth- 
century toils. 

A similar remark is to be made regarding illustra- 
127 



Sunday-School Success 

tions from science. They must not be permitted to 
detract from or exclude the practical application. If 
we are teaching our boys and girls how all things 
work together for good to those that love God, we 
may use the illustration of the rainbow, explaining 
that it is on the very raindrops of the storm itself 
that God paints his wonderful symbol of hope and 
trust. That is poetical and true, but the lesson re- 
mains as misty as the rainbow itself unless you go on 
to show your scholars how the lame boy among them 
gets more time for study on account of his lameness, 
how the boy who has been sick has learned far more 
than he knew before about the love of his dear ones 
and about the great Physician, how the boy who has 
had to leave school and go to work is none the less 
getting a priceless schooling in patience and deter- 
mination and energy and faithfulness. 

Many of these practical illustrations you may 
by questions draw out from the boys themselves. 
" Blessed are the peacemakers." Call for stories of 
boyish quarrels settled by some boy Solon. That is 
better than telling about the Massachusetts boards 
of arbitration in strikes. " My cup runneth over." 
Draw out a list of their own boyish blessings, which 
are more to them than those of any saint or psalmist. 

But especially this practical application, to be suc- 
cessful, must be the work of a consecrated imagina- 
tion. A Sunday-school teacher must think himself 
into the lives of others. " Bear ye one another's bur- 
dens." Now don't rake up from your encyclopedias 
128 



Illustrations and Applications 

the story of St. Christopher, beautiful as it is, and try- 
to twist it into an illustration of the text. No. Ask 
the bright scholar what he does to help his duller 
friends understand the knotty problems at school. 
Ask the merry boys what they do when mother is 
tired amusing the baby. Ask the selfish boy what a 
lad that greatly wanted a new sled could do to help 
his father bear his burden of poverty. 

To get these applications you have had to "put 
yourself in his place," to picture to your mind your 
scholars' joys and sorrows, desires and disappoint- 
ments, hopes and fears, labor and play. And in the 
process, and as its result, have come two rewards 
that no thumbing of dictionaries of biography, and 
manuals of mythology, and encyclopedias of illustra- 
tions, could ever give. You have come closer to the 
lives of your scholars, and you have drawn those 
lives closer to the present, practical Christ. 



129 



Chapter XXI 
Righteous Padding 

It is marvelous how rich in suggestion all passages 
of the Bible are to the thoughtful, studious mind. It 
is no less marvelous how bare and barren the wealth- 
iest portions become when filtered through a bare 
and barren mind. 

Truth is valuable only as it is extended into life. 
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God " ; that means to the child very little, packed 
into this condensed form. But let the teacher set 
about extending that blessed truth. Let him picture 
a man, cross, ugly, besotted, selfish, greedy, his heart 
all rotten with passion and pride. Go through a day 
with him, from the sullen greetings in the morning 
and his breakfast-table quarrels, through his business 
hours all stern and crabbed, to his morose and un- 
lovely evening. Ask the children how much he sees 
and enjoys of the beautiful world, how much he gets 
from noble books, what perception he has of the 
character of his charming wife and children. He is 
130 



Righteous Padding 

blind to all these things. Why? Because of his 
impure heart. 

Show how this baseness follows him to church, 
holds him down from praying, weights his songs, dulls 
his vision of spiritual things. Ask them how it will 
be at death, when he goes out of this world with a 
soul taught to see only money and self. How can 
he see God? 

Then go on to tell them of their loving, gentle- 
hearted mothers, and how much good they can see in 
this world, in their friends, in their children, because 
their hearts are unselfish and pure. How easily they 
pray. How cheerily they sing. How near God is 
to them. Will there be any difficulty in their seeing 
God in the next world, when they can see so much 
of him in this? 

You have made quite a sermon out of that text. 
It has been extended largely, and yet the meaning 
of it has merely begun to dawn on those childish 
minds. 

Suppose you had taught it in this way : " Verse 
eight. Read it, Tommy. Now, who are blessed, 
Mary? And why are they blessed, Willie? Now 
don't forget that, children. Pay attention. Always 
remember it. The pure in heart see God. Why 
should we be pure in heart, Lucy? And how can we 
see God, Susy? Now don't forget it, children. Pay 
attention. Always remember it. The pure in heart 
see God. What have we learned in this verse, Lizzie ? 
Yes, that's right. You all want to be pure in heart, 
131 



Sunday-School Success 

children, now don't you? Why? Yes, that's right. 
I see you have paid attention." But they haven't, 
as any such teacher may find out by a question next 
Sunday. 

A teacher of children must learn the art of righteous 
padding. He must learn how to fill in outlines, how 
to expand texts. He must illustrate with imagery, 
parable, allegory, personal experience, use of material 
objects, pictures, action of the children. 

Especially valuable is the last, when it can be used. 
The teacher's cry for attention might well be trans- 
lated into the highwayman's, " Hold up your hands." 
At any rate, if you can manage to keep them busy 
with their hands, you have their eyes, tongues, and 
brains. 

Set them to hunting up verses in their Bibles. You 
will have the experience of a friend of mine who 
came to me once after trying it, and despairingly said 
that the children now wanted to do nothing else. 
Nearly every verse can be illustrated by a stanza 
from some common song. Get the children to sing 
it softly, first making them see how the song fits the 
Bible. Make liberal use of concert repetition of 
Bible verses. There is nothing better than this good 
old device for unifying and freshening the attention 
of a class. 

And pictures. Teachers do not yet know one- 
tenth of the teaching power of pictures. Take the 
Twenty-third Psalm for a familiar example. "The 
shepherd, want, green pastures, lie down, leadeth me, 
132 



Righteous Padding 

still waters, the paths of righteousness, the valley of 
the shadow, thy rod and staff, a table prepared, mine 
enemies, anointing, cup runneth over, the house of 
the Lord"— as you read that list did not fourteen 
pictures rise at once in your mind? Find them, and 
show them to the children. They will pay even better 
attention to your printed pictures than to your word- 
pictures. 

Experience will soon teach the teacher, if his eyes 
are open, the need of copious illustration. Astrono- 
mers tell us that it is very difficult to see the smallest 
objects visible to us in the sky, if they are in the form 
of little dots. They may have dimensions very much 
smaller and still be visible easily, if they are ex- 
tended into lines of light. So with the points of our 
lessons. They will miss attention entirely or gain it 
with difficulty, while they remain merely points. We 
must extend them, by the use of consecrated wits. 



133 



Chapter XXII 
The Sunday-School and the Newspaper 

On several pages of this book I have hinted at the 
use of the newspaper in our teaching ; but the theme 
deserves a chapter to itself. An up-to-date teacher 
is respected, and it is largely the newspaper that brings 
one up to date. We must put our lessons into touch 
with life, and the newspaper is our modern compen- 
dium of life — very faulty, but all we have. The best 
illustration of the lesson is one your scholars find ; the 
next best, one you find yourself ; and only the third 
best, one found for you by the skilful writers of your 
lesson helps. The newspapers are mines of original 
illustrations. 

They constitute, for example, a magazine of warn- 
ings. Hardly a number but tells of a defalcation 
sprung from gambling, of the ruin accomplished by 
the theater and dance-hall, of the mischief caused by 
sensational literature, and everywhere and always of 
the rum-fiend's devilish work. Why Saul fell, and 
David, and Solomon,— your scholars must know that ; 
i34 



The Sunday-School and the Newspaper 

but their sense of the reality of sin and its fearful 
power will be deepened by noting the fall of men and 
women in this present world, and learning what 
brought shipwreck to their souls. A misplaced switch 
last week threw a train from the track and killed a 
man. What a warning against carelessness! Early 
Wednesday morning a drunken woman was found 
asleep on an ash-pile, her little girl sobbing by her 
side. What a lesson on the evil wrought by rum! 
Of all the sins and faults against which the Bible 
utters its great warnings, there is none we may not 
illustrate freshly and vividly from the newspaper. 

But that is only half, and the lower half. By 
sharp search we may find in our papers many a thrill- 
ing example of heroism and noble service. Would 
that our reporters more frequently chronicled the 
good ! Yet here is a fire at which a fireman risked 
his life to save a little child. And here is a cashier 
that braved death rather than open the safe for the 
robbers. And here is a lad whose shoulder was dis- 
located by stopping a runaway horse And here is 
a heroic rescue of men and women from a shipwreck. 
We do not get from the newspaper the daily acts of 
devotion and faithfulness so honored in the eye of 
heaven; but we do get the splendid deeds, the stir- 
ring, romantic victories, that will move the girls and 
boys to knightly action. 

Newspapers, too, give an outlook over the world. 
The confining walls melt away, and your lesson takes 
wide sweeps under a broad sky. Every session of 
135 



Sunday-School Success 

Congress considers many matters of the highest im- 
port for the kingdom of God. Our great offices are 
filled with men of strong character, acting out upon 
a grand scale lives potent for good or evil. In the 
lands across the seas great events are occurring, each 
exhibiting some phase of godliness or sin. You will 
exalt the gospel mightily in the minds of your schol- 
ars if you can show them how its principles solve the 
problems of our government, and underlie all wise 
action of the nations of the world. 

It has already been indicated how the temperance 
lesson, that quarterly bugbear of some teachers, may 
be illuminated by the newspaper. Thus also may the 
missionary lesson. So profoundly do missions affect 
any nation they touch, and so closely are they inter- 
woven with its life, that whatever of importance be- 
falls any people has its missionary bearings. The 
Sultan cannot massacre the Armenians, or France 
seize Madagascar, or Japan fight China, or Hawaii 
depose its queen, or a revolution occur in South 
America, without entanglement with the omnipresent 
missionaries of the cross. To make the scholars feel 
this through wise references to current events is im- 
mensely to broaden their conception of the church 
and its work. 

Even beyond all this, our newspapers afford the 
teacher a vast supply of illustrative material. There 
are the carefully prepared biographies of the great 
men and women that pass away, printed with their 
portraits. There are sketches of the lives of living 
136 



The Sunday-School and the Newspaper 

celebrities, with pictures of their faces and their homes. 
There are lectures and sermons, sometimes admirably 
reported, giving in a few bright paragraphs the gist 
of an hour's discourse. There are thousands of poems 
by the best modern authors. There are appropriate 
editorial comments on all the holidays, Christmas and 
New Year's, Easter and Memorial Day, Thanksgiv- 
ing and the Fourth of July. There are accounts of 
the latest wonderful inventions, each a pointed para- 
ble to one with eyes and a brain. And, with all its 
pictorial enormities, the newspaper often contains a 
portrait or a sketch worth using in our lesson half-hour. 

In all this I am taking for granted, of course, that 
you subscribe to no sensational abomination, but to 
the best of our standard sheets, even if you must get 
it from some other city than your own. It must be 
a paper so clean that you can occasionally hand a 
copy to your scholars, and fearlessly set them to 
" reading up " on some theme helpful to the lesson. 
Besides, it must not be forgotten that our best reli- 
gious weeklies are now genuine newspapers as well, 
and furnish admirable comments upon all important 
current events. 

To use the newspaper to the best advantage in 
your teaching, you must have well in mind all the 
lesson themes for months in advance, since a striking 
event of to-day might not illustrate this week's les- 
son, but the lesson of five weeks ahead. Your best 
plan is to cut out each day the paragraphs and arti- 
cles that seem likely to be of use, and preserve them 
i37 



Sunday-School Success 

in a series of envelopes. Mark one set of envelopes 
with the topics and dates of a year's lessons. Let 
another set contain the clippings arranged by subjects, 
as: "Love," "Faith," "Temperance," "Missions," 
"Theater," "Heroism," "Inventions." These will 
contain poems as well as prose. Some, rather than 
classify the bits of biography under the characteristics 
especially prominent in each case, will prefer to ar- 
range them alphabetically, in a separate set of twenty- 
six envelopes. As the envelope for each week's lesson 
is used, distribute its contents through your per- 
manent file. Frequently glance over your clippings 
to refresh your memory concerning them ; otherwise 
they will become so much dead wood. 

Not an unimportant result of all this is that it will 
teach your scholars to read the newspaper as a Chris- 
tian should. In this great American university our 
scholars should be taught to skip the courses in evil 
and elect those in goodness. 

And a final word, — which, indeed, no teacher is 
likely to need, though it must be said : keep the whole 
matter subordinate. It is not proposed to turn our 
Sunday-schools into classes for the study of current 
events. We have to do with one Life, and with that 
alone. We are teaching not all kinds of truth, but 
him who is the Truth. Whatever we admit into our 
teaching that does not exalt him and throw light on 
his life and doctrine is a harmful impertinence. We 
are not to study the lamp, but the Book that lies be- 
neath it. 

138 



Chapter XXIII 
On Taking Things for Granted 

The cliff-sealer, who lowers his comrade down the 
precipice, does not take for granted the fastening 
around the tree or the stoutness of the rope ; but the 
Sunday-school teacher too often throws his young 
people into the treacherous depths of thought and life 
with little care for their life-rope's integrity or moor- 
ings. More than once or twice or thrice in my own 
experience, after weeks and months of supposedly 
thorough intercourse with my scholars, an awkward 
question, better aimed by Heaven than by myself, has 
disclosed some fatal doubt, some fundamental mis- 
conception. I had been taking for granted that my 
boy really believed Christ to be divine, or that he had 
at least the beginnings of a conception of the Saviour's 
mission to the earth, or that he knew by experience 
the meaning of prayer, or that he actually had con- 
fidence in a future life. 

I have in mind a fine, thoughtful fellow, graduate 
of a famous college and a church-member, whose 
i39 



Sunday-School Success 

very thoughtfulness, and the knowledge of his reli- 
gious activity in former years, led me, when he entered 
my class, to take for granted his Christianity. After 
weeks of teaching, it was only a chance question, in 
private conversation, that led him to the frank admis- 
sion that skeptical college friends had absolutely de- 
stroyed his faith in Christ and the Bible, leaving him 
with only a sad and bewildered hold on the God of 
nature. What Sunday-school teacher has not been 
startled thus with disclosures of his own carelessness 
in taking things for granted? 

It is a mistake constantly to advertise skepticism 
by warning our scholars against it, but it is no mistake 
to arm them against it. No teacher has mastered his 
lesson until he has mastered every doubt regarding it 
that any of his scholars is likely to entertain. " Will 
this punishment seem unjust? this event fabulous? 
this person mythical? this doctrine unreasonable? this 
miracle unreal? this author apocryphal? these men 
and women mere creatures of imagination ? " Such 
questions as these are important for the teacher to 
consider, — to consider, not ask in the class. Be- 
cause to the teacher the account is more true and 
vivid than an extract from yesterday's newspaper, he- 
takes it for granted that his scholars so regard it. 
They may put the lesson story in the same category 
as Baron Munchausen or "The Ancient Mariner," 
and such a teacher would be none the wiser. 

I know of nothing in the way of study that is so 
capable of firing a Sunday-school teacher and class 
140 



On Taking Things for Granted 

as Christian evidences. Remember that this also is 
a study of the Bible. Why is it ordinarily thought 
so dull? It is full of snap and point. Professor 
Fisher's short " Manual of Christian Evidences," 
published by Charles Scribner's Sons at seventy-five 
cents, stands next to my Bible as an aid and inspira- 
tion in teaching that Bible. I keep several copies, 
and all of them are usually in the hands of earnest 
scholars. Often when they are returned the compli- 
ment is, " That book helped me so much that I have 
bought a copy of my own." That means the con- 
version of a doubting Thomas. " Why! " exclaimed 
one such reader, " I never knew before that there was 
anything to prove Christianity but the Bible, or any- 
thing but the Bible to prove the Bible." 

A teacher that is not in the habit of questioning 
persistently and searchingly can have no idea of the 
depth and at the same time the shallowness of the re- 
ligious thinking of the average scholar. Far too 
many teachers prove everything by quoting the in- 
spired Bible, taking it for granted that their scholars 
accept the Bible as inspired ; or by referring to our 
divine Saviour, taking it for granted that their schol- 
ars believe Christ to be a divine Saviour. Our schol- 
ars are more shrewd than that. Their answers will 
be proper, but skepticism often lurks beneath, ready 
to spring up in open infidelity, secret scorn, or fruit- 
less, formal morality. 

Skepticism should never be anticipated, but it 
should never be neglected. It should never be dealt 
141 



Sunday-School Success 

with before the class, if it can be dealt with in pri- 
vate. But it is a teacher's first duty to know the 
great truths of Christianity, and know why he knows 
them. It is his second duty to make certain that 
each of his scholars knows them, and can prove them. 
" But we cannot cover the ground without taking 
things for granted." Cover the ground! Superficial 
area, and superficial teaching! 



142 



Chapter XXIV 
Utilizing the Late Scholar 

The late scholar is no blessing, and yet he is far 
from an unmixed evil. The wise teacher will get all 
the good he can out of him. 

Of course, he is to be transformed into the early- 
scholar, care being taken lest by mistake he be trans- 
formed into the scholar absent altogether. And dur- 
ing this process of transformation there is a small 
harvest of advantage to be tended. 

Let his entrance be a danger signal. Don't act 
mad. Of course, the electric current of interest is 
flowing by this time, or never, and the late scholar 
rudely breaks it. But never mind. Better the total 
loss of your scholars' interest in the lesson than the 
loss of their respect for you. 

Remember, too, that there may be a good excuse, — 
even late coming may mean earnest endeavor, — and 
premature impatience in such case will cause you dis- 
mayed repentance. 

The late scholar cannot be ignored; don't try it. 
i43 



Sunday-School Success 

Sometimes we fiercely attempt to finish our sentences, 
or get answers to our last questions. The late schol- 
ar is a potent and aggressive fact, and cannot be got 
rid of in that way. 

No. Accept the situation promptly and sensibly. 
Stop short at once, and greet the late comer heartily. 
Don't let him sneak into a back seat, but set him in 
the midst. See that he has a Bible or a lesson paper. 
Incorporate him. Then proceed thriftily to utilize 
him. He is your opportunity for a review. You 
probably need one at this stage of the lesson, anyway. 
Here is your chance for gathering up loose ends and 
binding all the truths thus far taught in a compact 
whole. 

You may do it in this way : " Before you came in, 
Charley, we were talking about Christ's command to 
lay up treasures, not on earth, but in heaven. We've 
been deciding what some of the earth-treasures are. 
We've agreed that they include money and clothes 
and houses and studies and friends, and that we 
mustn't win any of these in such a. way that they 
will belong merely to earth. You see? And now, 
class, can any one think of another earth-treasure? " 

Or you may do it in this way : " Here's Charley. 
John, will you please tell him what we talked about 
at the beginning of the lesson? That's good. And 
Bess, tell him, please, what conclusion we have come 
to thus far. That's right. And now let us go on." 

Similarly, all through the lesson, the late scholar 
may be your excuse for bringing up points mentioned 
144 



Utilizing the Late Scholar 

at the opening of the hour, and needing repetition. 
" Something was said at the start which bears on that 
matter, and Charley wasn't here. Ned, please tell 
him what that was." 

Bring him into the electric circle by a question as 
soon as you can. But remember that it takes time 
for him to become charged with interest and under- 
standing as fully as the rest, and ask him easy ques- 
tions at first, or, perhaps better, call on him to read 
a verse or two. 

The late scholar's exit is fraught with as much 
danger as his entrance. You must utilize that also. 
Let your questioning be jolly and indirect : " Too 
much sleep this morning, Billy? " "Sorry, Ellen, that 
you couldn't start in with us " ; " Some good points 
you missed at the opening, Fred." 

If rightly used, this is an opportunity for learning 
of some need or temptation that besets your scholar. 
She may be lazy. He may be too fond of sleep. 
She may keep too late hours. He may be led astray 
by the Sunday morning papers. They may fail to 
see the value of the opening prayer and songs. You 
get fresh insight into their characters. 

When Nature heals a broken bone, she makes it 
the stronger for the break. And so, though the late 
scholar seem to fracture sadly the interest of the les- 
son, the wise teacher will know how to mend the 
matter in such shrewd fashion as to knit the whole 
class more firmly together. 



145 



Chapter XXV 
Side-Tracking the Teacher 

Even the poorest teacher has a right to the course 
he has marked out for himself; even the smartest 
scholar has no right to side-track him. 

Some scholars side-track their teacher merely to 
show that they understand how to use the switch ; 
others do it by simply fooling with the switch, in pure 
carelessness and thoughtlessness; others really wish 
to bring the teacher nearer some private interest of 
their own. 

Their motive must determine your treatment of 
them,— whether it is to be the bruskness that rebukes 
conceit, the firm patience that resists carelessness, or 
the considerate postponement of questions that are 
prompted by a need. 

But so far as its effect on the lesson is concerned, 
it makes no difference whether the teacher is side- 
tracked by a switch of gold or one of brass,— the les- 
son is " held up," and often permanently. 

It is not always easy to tell when these question- 
146 



Side-Tracking the Teacher 

switches are open, and when they are closed,— when 
they will side-track you, and when they will merely 
salute you with a friendly rattle and let you pass ; the 
tokens are not so definite as on the red and white 
faces of the switch indicator. And yet you cannot 
engineer your class far without wrecking it, if you do 
not learn to read these question indicators, and tell at 
a glance whither they will send you. 

But what is the use of reading them, if you are to 
be at their mercy anyway? How shall we circum- 
vent these mischief-making switchers ? 

Some would abruptly take away their switch-keys, 
and practically dismiss them from the force ; that is, 
they would prohibit questioning altogether. But this 
is capitulating to the problem. Some would swing 
smilingly off upon the side-track, as if they had in- 
tended to go there. But that is surrendering their 
preparation. Some would rush precipitately into the 
side-track and through it, expecting to find at the 
other end a switch back to the main track. But thus 
the lesson is usually derailed. 

On the railroad, of course, there is authority ; but 
in the Sunday-school the less appeal to authority the 
better. No, the likeness, to a large extent, stops 
here ; for in the Sunday-school the only way to deal 
with a scholar who side-tracks the train is to win him 
by friendly arts to become your helper rather than 
your hinderer. 

In the first place, many a lesson is side-tracked 
because the main track is not made sufficiently plain 
147 



Sunday-School Success 

to the scholars' apprehension. When the lesson 
winds like a snake, with a purpose known only to the 
teacher (if to him), small blame to the scholars if they 
switch it off the wrong way by a question. Strike out 
in a bee-line at the start, and stick to it. No one 
will then ignorantly side-track you. 

In the second place, many a lesson is side-tracked 
because the teacher does not act as if he cared 
whether he ever arrived anywhere or not. Lacka- 
daisical in manner and matter, his carelessness pro- 
vokes equal carelessness in his scholars. Let him, on 
the other hand, appear to be eagerly on the scent of 
some truth, on the track of some fact, following the 
path of some event or demonstration, and his schol- 
ars will, in the main, be " forth and right on " with 
him. 

In the third place, many a lesson is side-tracked 
because the scholars are not on the side of the 
teacher. Of course, when the two parties are at 
cross-purposes, things run no more evenly than they 
would if the engineer of a train were out of touch 
with his crew. The teacher must get up an esprit de 
corps, a class spirit, or his class will be perpetually 
flying off from him on a tangent. His scholars must 
be interested in him, if they are to be interested with 
him. He must draw them to himself, or they will 
never pull together. Friendship in his crew must 
take the place of authority in the railroad crew ; and 
the more friendship, the less side-tracking. 

In the fourth place, there must be frankness of 
148 



Side-Tracking the Teacher 

speech. A misplaced switch on a railway, if it pro- 
voked no further collision, would at least provoke a 
clash of words. There is no reason why, if a ques- 
tion is too far aside from the main purpose of the 
lesson, the teacher should not frankly say so. He 
may lay it away in his mind for later discussion ; he 
may promise to talk it over after the session ; but no 
fear of being thought incompetent, or unsympathetic, 
or arbitrary, should induce him to turn aside from his 
one purpose. The wise teacher will make many 
exceptions, of course, to every rule ; but nevertheless, 
a rule of the wise teacher it must be, to say to every 
irrelevant question, kindly and tactfully, yet firmly, 
" Get thee behind me." For the half-hour is all too 
short. The impressions made are all too confused. 
The instruction given is all too fragmentary. How- 
ever wise and earnest the individual moments may 
be, there is danger that the half-hour may pass into 
oblivion at once, unless these individual moments 
have been wise and earnest to some single, distinct 
end. 

There is a place for switches in our Sunday-school 
lesson. The train must be made up. Side excur- 
sions must often be made. There are sundry con- 
necting lines whose cars must be switched in. But in 
genuine Sunday-school railroading there must be no 
delay upon side-tracks. Let all teachers, as far as 
possible, run express. 



149 



Chapter XXVI 
The Problem of the Visitor 

The analogy for the class-building of some teach- 
ers is the arch. Every scholar is needed in his place, 
or the class-work collapses ; and of course there is no 
room for a visitor. The analogy for the true class is 
the electric circle. Join hands all around, and ever 
room and electricity for one more. 

I do not mean to imply that the visitor is not a 
problem. He is an intrusion on your familiar little 
group. He is a foreign and constraining element. 
He is a problem, however, that you cannot get rid of, 
but must solve. 

Utilize the visitor. Go to work in such way as to 
transform him into a scholar ; or if circumstances for- 
bid that, at any rate win from his visit fresh interest 
and inspiration for the class. Every visitor is an 
angel of opportunity, entertained — how often! — un- 
awares. 

Let your reception of the visitor be to your class 
an object-lesson in Christian courtesy. If he comes 
150 



The Problem of the Visitor 

in alone, and awkwardly drops into a distant seat, do 
not wait for the busy superintendent to get around to 
him. If he is of fit age for your class, drop every- 
thing, — the most valuable lesson you could be teach- 
ing is not so valuable as this practical example,— and 
go to the stranger. Introduce yourself cordially to 
him, and him to the rest of the class, or, at any rate, 
to his neighbors. 

Sometimes resign the pleasure of seeking the visi- 
tor yourself, and send some persuasive scholar, thus 
letting him have a taste of the joy of giving invita- 
tions. Possibly it will help him into the habit of 
giving invitations outside. 

Get your scholars to hand the visitor a lesson leaf 
or a Bible. Show them that he is their visitor as well 
as yours. They will soon learn to be delightfully court- 
eous. But an iceberg teacher makes an iceberg class. 

And now you are on trial before your class. They 
will judge you by the interest or the apathy of the 
visitor. They are watching him, ready to be ashamed 
or proud of you. 

Yet do not fear your visitor. He may come from 
a better school and a better teacher. He may be 
critical and sneering and skeptical. Nevertheless, he 
is your opportunity. Rejoice in it. 

If he is a better scholar than any in your class, 
what a valuable and inspiring example he may be 
made to them ! If a poorer scholar, what an oppor- 
tunity to make your class feel the joy and power of 
teaching some one! 

151 



Sunday-School Success 

If he is sneering and critical, the indignation of the 
class will bind them more enthusiastically to you. If 
he is skeptical, what a chance for examining and 
strengthening foundations ! 

The visitor is a mine of new ideas and experiences. 
Old thoughts take on novel forms when fitted to him. 
His questions and answers exhibit needs in your own 
class, unobserved because unfamiliar. His ways and 
words freshen the stagnant class atmosphere. 

And so he is your chance to get out of ruts and 
into new ways and moods. Bless Providence for 
him, and question him vigorously, making use of him 
to the utmost. 

Two cautions, however. Let your questioning be 
very clear. He is unused, remember, to your little 
mannerisms, and must not be confused by idiosyn- 
crasies. And in your exultation over him do not 
neglect the others, nor seem to change your plans for 
the visitor, or to be striving to show off before him. 

Final advantage of the visitor : Teach your schol- 
ars to ask him heartily to come again, not forgetting 
to do so cordially yourself. Committees on church 
extension, remember, are trained in the Sunday-school. 

Thus you see that the value of the visitor does not 
depend upon the visitor so much as might be ima- 
gined. Yet just a word on how to visit well. 

Go to give good. Take hearty interest in the les- 
son, and have some thought to add to the discussion. 
Better yet, have some earnest question to ask. And 
ask it. If you come from another school, consider 
152 



The Problem of the Visitor 

yourself a Christian ambassador bearing greetings of 
brotherly good will and common endeavor. 

Go to get good. Be unobtrusive and teachable. 
And especially, show that you have received good. 
Express appreciation, after the lesson, to teacher and 
scholars. Then will you be blessed, and, changing 
the meaning of the word "visitation," these words 
from the Wisdom of Solomon may be applied to you : 
" In the time of their visitation they shall shine, and 
run to and fro like sparks among the stubble." 



i53 



Chapter XXVII 

" Under Petticoat Government * 

One of the brightest women in the United States, 
a woman well known to the Protestant churches of 
the world, was groaning to me the other day : " What 
shall I do with those boys in my Sunday-school class? 
They are just at the age when they think they know a 
little more than any woman. They need a man. 
Don't you think the superintendent ought to remove 
them from under petticoat government?" 

This cry, that came so strangely from a woman of 
her ability and fame, comes also from a throng of 
baffled Sunday-school teachers. The answer would 
be easy, if there were anything like as many good 
Sunday-school teachers among the men as among the 
women. As it is, however, most boy classes must be 
assigned either to a distasteful petticoat government, 
or to an incompetent pantaloon government, or— cast 
adrift until, long years afterward, they drop anchor in 
the haven of matrimony, and happily, perchance, ap- 
pear once more in the Sunday-school, in the " Bible 
class." 

i54 



"Under Petticoat Government" 

The remedy, however, though not easy, is manifest. 
The boys do not need a man, but they do need in 
their teacher certain manly qualities that could be 
incorporated in a woman's teaching. These qualities 
all women whom the Lord of the Sunday-school has 
set over a class of his boys, should seek to get. 

The most obvious of them, I think, is a certain 
dignity and reserve that show themselves as well in 
refraining from scolding as in declining to pat on the 
head or hold by the hand. Boys of the undennable 
age we are talking about highly appreciate the title 
" Mr." Their greatest horror is petting ; their great- 
est aversion is nagging. A young man, set to teach 
a class of boys, will approach them with a sense of 
comradeship ; will at once make himself, if he is a 
teacher at all, " hail fellow well met " among them ; 
and yet, as the boys say, " there is no nonsense about 
him." 

It is far better — bad as that is— to talk over the 
heads of boys than to talk down to them. It is far 
better to use too few words than too many. If a 
teacher would hold boys, she must be concise, straight- 
forward, businesslike. Indeed, the latter adjective 
comes near to being the key to the situation. Boys 
dislike fussiness, and wordiness, and beating about 
the bush. Woman teachers that are eager for boys' 
souls will take a long step toward their astonished 
approbation if they school themselves to brevity, 
dignity, and " business." 

Set the boys to work. Imitate common-school 
i55 



Sunday-School Success 

methods. In the public school woman teachers hold 
the boys, and win their honest hearts. It is largely 
because here there are definiteness of purpose and firm 
continuity of aim. Boys are easily mastered by a 
taskmaster who is master of her task. Boys that 
cannot be won by Sunday-school preaching are readily 
won by Sunday-school teachifig. Lay down a distinct 
course of work, with a goal in fair view, and they 
will gird up the loins of their minds ; but they refuse 
to follow you in aimless wanderings through a thicket. 
To learn in chronological order the seventy-five 
prominent events in Christ's life; to trace through 
the Bible the doctrine of the atonement ; to commit 
to memory every Scripture passage bearing on the 
temperance problem; to write a six-hundred-word 
abstract of the Book of Genesis ; to make a classifi- 
cation of the Psalms by topics ; to compile the Bible 
proverbs that have to do with money and wealth- 
getting ; to make a diagram graphically depicting the 
history of the Old Testament Hebrews ; to write out 
the Ten Commandments, and place in parallel 
columns the New Testament enlargements and inter- 
pretations thereof,— these are samples of the work 
boys would like to do. They would give high praise 
to a teacher who conducted them through such tasks. 
They would say that she " meant business." 

And that leads me to mention another point in 
which woman teachers are more likely than men to 
fail, though both are far too weak,— the use of evi- 
dence, of proof. This is a hobby of mine, but it is 
156 



"Under Petticoat Government" 

the boys themselves, and recollections of my own 
boyhood, that have set me on the hobby. Wherever 
a thing is susceptible of proof, boys want it proved to 
them. If it is not susceptible of proof, they want 
that proved to them, also. Woman's traditional 
" because " does not commend itself to the lawyerlike 
boys. Fresh from their botany in the public schools, 
they refuse to take on faith the Cana miracle. Ready 
for their physiology or physics the next day, they 
want more proof than a " say so " that a leper was 
ever healed by a word or that Peter really walked on 
the waves. " It is in the Bible " is not enough ; they 
must know why they must believe the Bible. 

Now I am not so foolish as to advise any one to 
suggest skepticism to a boy, and I know that there is 
a way of handling Scripture evidences that serves 
rather to raise doubt than to confirm faith ; but I have 
enough of the boy in me to be sure that in no way 
can a teacher more highly exalt both herself and 
Christianity in the eyes of the boys than by insisting 
on the reasonableness of both. I had the best of 
Sunday-school teachers, quite a score of them, women 
and men ; yet until full manhood I wrestled all alone 
with a concealed and absolute skepticism that would 
not down until I had hunted out for myself the many 
overwhelming proofs of the resurrection of Christ. 
If any of my twenty teachers had set those proofs 
with lawyerlike force and directness before my boyish 
mind, I should have been saved some very dark years 
that came near making an infidel of me altogether. 
157 



Sunday-School Success 

Because I think that boys feel this need of proof and 
evidence more than girls, and that women are less 
ready to meet the need than men, I have ventured to 
add this suggestion to my list. 

And that list may close with only one point further. 
Boys like to be taught by men, because through men 
they get a telescope-view into the life-work that lies 
before them. Men teachers draw their illustrations 
from mannish things, from business life, from inven- 
tions, from politics, from commerce, from the law. 
Where a woman might illustrate dishonesty by apple- 
stealing, thereby causing every urchin before her to 
exclaim " Chestnut! " under his breath, a man would 
be more likely to make some discussion about water- 
ing stock or falsifying entries. A man is more likely 
than a woman to render Scripture vivid and practical 
by reference to current events, dropping a word here 
and there about the war between China and Japan, 
about Gladstone's retirement, about the Manitoba 
school question, about the Honduras lottery, — just a 
word, but the boys prick up their ears. A woman 
might compare Gideon with David, but a man would 
be far more likely to compare him with Parkhurst. 

And now my point is that the boy needs both, — 
both David and Parkhurst. There is no reason why 
the woman teacher cannot give the boy everything 
he could get from a man teacher, and more. It is 
easy to appear to a boy quite a Solon regarding cur- 
rent events. It is not so very hard, by the exercise 
of a consecrated imagination, to place yourself by the 
158 



"Under Petticoat Government" 

boy's side on the outskirts of the great, wide world 
of busy activities he is soon to enter, and feel his im- 
patience to be there and his hunger for any tidings 
from that charmed country. Show him how Chris- 
tianity untangles the skeins of business, is the master- 
key to all true politics, the foundation of law, the 
compass of commerce, the force of civilization. 
Read the newspapers wisely, and find out what is 
going on in the world. Read wisely the hearts of 
your boys, and find out what is going on in that 
world. Lift manfully over both worlds the banner 
of Christ. 

One point at a time, with cheerful persistence, the 
teacher that " means business " will win for her 
teaching these adaptations to the needs of her boys. 
And in the process, losing nothing of womanliness, 
she will have nobly broadened her own life, while as 
its result she will have won a double hold, both a 
woman's hold and a man's hold, on the hearts of the 
boys. 



i59 



Chapter XXVIII 
The Teacher's Three Graces 

The teacher's manner must be heart-born. It 
must not become mannerism, which is head-born, and 
never reaches hearts. " Manner maketh the man," 
and also the teacher,— half-way, at least. If we sus- 
pect, however, that our manner is defective, the 
manner itself is the last thing to look at; we must 
look at our heart. That is the place to get the change. 

Three heart qualities produce the ideal teacher's 
manner. One of these is earnestness. If you would 
make on your scholars an impression that will last be- 
yond the hour, you yourself must be deeply impressed 
with the eternal years. To move their life, keep before 
you their death. That is hard to do, when con- 
fronted by such abounding youthful vigor and vitality. 
Become an advocate, a pleader, with eternal life as 
the stake. Learn to know deeply the great central 
truths of sin, atonement, sanctification. Aim at radi- 
cal and positive results in confession, testimony, 
spirituality, character, and conduct, and press toward 
these as the genuine verdict on your teaching. 
1 60 



The Teacher's Three Graces 

The second quality is cheeriness. We are prophets 
of awful alternatives, but we are also ministers of the 
most blessed joy. Happiness is the best recommen- 
dation of Christianity. In it center all the Christian 
evidences. Learn by heart all the promises; they 
are better teaching weapons than the prohibitions and 
warnings. Keep a smile very close to the surface, 
and improve every fair chance to laugh. The 
teacher that is in earnest, need never be afraid to be 
merry. Permit no exaggeration of the facts of 
wickedness, either in them or in others. The more 
stormy the day and the fewer in attendance, the 
cheerier be you. 

The third quality is sympathy. The true teacher 
has, or gets, the poet's ability to project himself into 
the lives of others. He keeps invisible, tactful anten- 
nae playing in all directions, feeling this one's com- 
ing embarrassment before it arrives, conscious of that 
one's eager assent before it lights his eyes, exploring 
homes and occupations and character in order to 
adapt question to scholar. Without argument or 
plan, but by instinctive appreciation of differing per- 
sonality, the true teacher assumes dignity with this 
pupil, bonhomie with that. So far is he from treating 
all alike, that he never treats even the same person 
in the same way two days in succession, knowing, 
by feeling rather than theory, that no one— especially 
no child— is the same person two days in succession. 

These are the teacher's three graces : earnestness, 
born of faith and unsatisfied until it has inspired an 
161 



Sunday-School Success 

equal faith; cheeriness, born of hope, and hope- 
creating ; and sympathy, born of love, which is the 
greatest of all. These in the heart blossom outwardly 
into the perfect teaching manner,— earnestness to 
arrest, cheeriness to attract, and sympathy to hold. 
" Covet earnestly the best gifts." 



162 



Chapter XXIX 
Something to Belong to 

I believe in the organization of Sunday-school 
classes, because it fosters class spirit. If it is a good 
thing to have a class, it is a good thing for the class 
to have a spirit. This class spirit should promote the 
school spirit, just as the esprit de corps of a company 
enhances the loyalty of soldiers to their regiment. 

When a scholar has signed a constitution, he feels 
that he belongs to the school. Lacking this feeling, 
he will not be long with the school or with anything 
else. 

In the simple constitution of my class (which is a 
class of young men) are provisions for a porch, a 
lookout, and a social committee. 

The porch committee watches the morning congre- 
gation for strange young men, and invites them to 
come to Sunday-school. The lookout committee 
seeks throughout town and church for permanent 
additions to the class, whom, through its chairman, it 
proposes for membership. This is a great gain. 
163 



Sunday-School Success 

When a teacher urges people to join his class he] is 
inviting them to the gospel, certainly, but he is also 
inviting them to himself. In the first cause he is as 
bold as a lion, but in the second many a modest soul 
is naturally, even though foolishly, bashful. Happy 
the teacher whose scholars are zealous in this vital 
service, for him so delicate and for them so blessed! 

The voting in of new members, with the subsequent 
producing of the constitution for signatures, is a little 
ceremony as useful for the old scholars in reminding 
them of their class autonomy as it is inspiring to the 
new scholars. A hearty word of welcome from the 
teacher to the new-comers gives them a formal and 
public installation. They have indeed taken on 
themselves a new function. 

The social committee will greatly add to the effi- 
ciency of any class. Monthly class socials are genuine 
means of grace. Our socials are thus managed: 
Each social has a solid backbone, consisting of a 
paper or talk by some member of the class, detailing 
little-known points in his own business. Of a neigh- 
boring class similarly organized, one is a young archi- 
tect, another works in a rope-walk, a third holds an 
important position in a newspaper office, a fourth is 
in the leather business, the teacher of the class is a 
judge. Utilizing the experiences of their own mem- 
bers and friends, this class has held quite remarkable 
socials. It has found the contribution of the clerk 
in a furniture store as interesting as that of the young 
banker. The class have been wonderfully knit to- 
164 



Something to Belong to 

gether by the bonds of a common and a widening 
interest. After these papers or talks (which are often 
appropriately illustrated), come discussion and ques- 
tions, followed by games or light refreshments. By 
occasional joint socials of this kind we hope to draw 
together this class and my own. Of course, this is 
only one out of a myriad schemes of entertainment 
that could be devised for these class socials. The 
point the shrewd teacher will notice is that it is the 
scholars themselves who plan these socials, and who 
thus take into their own hands the creation of a 
warm, helpful class atmosphere. Every teacher 
should know that in making new scholars feel at 
home it is hardly his own sociability, but that of his 
scholars, that counts. 

If the class is thus organized, the teacher must 
guard the authority of his class president as jealously 
as his own. If you want your class officers to feel 
genuine responsibility, it must be genuine responsi- 
bility that you put upon them. Give up to the presi- 
dent, during the conduct of business, your place in 
front of the class. Wait to be recognized by him 
before you speak. Make few motions. Inspire others 
to take the initiative. 

The election of officers should come every six 
months, and it is best to bring about a thorough ro- 
tation in office. Improve every chance to emphasize 
the class organization. If your school arrangements 
permit, vote every month on the disposal of the class 
collections. If you must be absent a Sunday, ask 
165 



Sunday-School Success 

the class to elect a substitute teacher, and ask the 
president to inform the substitute of his election. An 
alternate should be chosen also, to make the thing 
sure. This little device serves to make the scholars 
as loyal to the substitute teacher as to their own, for 
they have made him their own. In the course of the 
lessons, also, a wide-awake teacher will frequently 
mention and emphasize the class organization. 

Of course the whole plan will fall flat if the teacher 
wholly delegates to his scholars any or all of these 
lines of work. He also must invite the strangers, if 
he expects his scholars to do so. He also must seek 
for new members, if he would inspire them to do the 
same. Without his sociableness they will soon be- 
come frigid. The teacher alone has the dipper of 
water that starts the pump. Any contrivance that 
lessens his responsibility lessens his success. 

But the plan I have outlined has value, not because 
it permits the teacher to do less, but because it incites 
the scholars to do vastly more. An ounce drawn out 
.is better than a ton put in. One thing you get them 
to do is a greater triumph than a dozen things you do 
much better for them. 



166 



Chapter XXX 
Through Eye-Gate 

Before his listless and restless audience the lec- 
turer took in his hand a piece of chalk, turned to the 
blackboard, and touched it. Instantly he had the 
eager attention of all. He did nothing with the 
chalk ; had not intended to do anything ; he carried 
his point with it, nevertheless. 

A teacher, plus a bit of chalk, is two teachers. And 
any one may double himself thus, if he choose to take 
a little pains. 

Surely there need be no hesitation as to the mate- 
rials. If you can have a blackboard, that is fine. I 
myself like best a board fastened to the wall, and a 
second board hinged to this after the fashion of a 
double slate. The outside may be used for " standing 
matter," and the inside opened up for the surprises. 

But this is a great luxury. A portable, flexible 
blackboard will answer, if your class is away from the 
wall. You can roll it up and carry it home to prac- 
tise there. You can use both sides of it. Such black- 
boards may be obtained now for two dollars. 

Not even a flexible blackboard, however, is essen- 
167 



Sunday-School Success 

tial. A slate will serve you admirably, and some of 
the best chalk-talkers use simple sheets of manilla 
paper tacked to ordinary pine boards. 

Then, as to the chalk, by all means use colored 
crayons. It is easy to learn effective contrasts of 
colors, and bright hues will increase many fold the 
attractiveness of your pictures and diagrams. But 
these crayons need not be of the square variety, sold 
especially for such work at thirty-five cents a box. 
They produce beautiful results, but the ordinary 
schoolroom box of assorted colors will serve your turn 
admirably and cost much less. 

And if the materials are readily obtained, so is the 
artistic skill. Trust to the active imaginations of the 
children. Remember in their own drawings how 
vivid to them are the straight lines that stand for men, 
the squares that represent houses, the circles with 
three dots that set forth faces with eyes and mouth. 
I once saw Mrs. Crafts teach the parable of the Good 
Samaritan in a most fascinating way to some little 
tots, and her blackboard work was merely some rough 
ovals, each drawn half through its neighbor, to rep- 
resent a chain of love, — love to papa, love to mamma, 
to sister, brother, friend, teacher,— neighbor. And as 
circle after circle was briskly added, every child was 
filled with delight. That same parable of the Good 
Samaritan I once saw perfectly illustrated— for all 
practical purposes— by four squares, each with two 
parallel lines curving from one upper corner to the 
opposite lower one, to represent the descent of the 
1 68 



Through Eye-Gate 

Jericho road, while the various scenes were depicted 
with the aid of short, straight lines, the man fallen 
among thieves being a horizontal line, the priest and 
Levite being stiffly upright and placed on appropriate 
points in the road, while the line for the Samaritan 
was leaning over as if helping his fallen brother rise ! 
Surely that series of drawings was not beyond the 
artistic skill of any teacher. 

One of the beauties of such simple work is that it 
may be dashed off in the presence of the scholars, 
while more elaborate pictures must be prepared be- 
forehand ; and half the value of blackboard work is 
in the attention excited by the moving chalk. I use 
the expression " dashed off," but I do not want to 
imply careless work. The straight lines should be as 
straight as you can make them without a ruler, the 
circles as true circles as can be drawn without a string, 
and the stars should have equal points. The simpler 
the drawing, the more need that every mark should 
have its mission and fulfill it well. A confused scrawl 
will only make mental confusion worse confounded. 
Don't be satisfied with rough work, or it will con- 
stantly become rougher. Try to do better all the time. 

Of course, this means home practice, even for the 
simplest of exercises, like Mrs. Crafts' links of the 
love-chain. The nearer the links are to perfect ovals, 
the better. The more nicely they are shaded on one 
side, the more distinct will be the impression of a 
chain. And the more rapidly they can be drawn, the 
more tense will be the children's interest. A few easy 
169 



Sunday-School Success 

lessons in drawing, from some public-school teacher 
or some text-book, will prove of inestimable value, 
— lessons enough to give you at least an idea of per- 
spective, so that you can make a house or a box stand 
out from the board, and know which sides to shade 
of the inside of a door. Make such simple begin- 
nings as I have indicated, and determine to advance, 
however slowly. It is hard to draw a man, but not 
so difficult if you are willing to begin with a little cir- 
cle for the head, an oval for the body, and two 
straight lines for legs. 

But even if you do not draw at all, it is well worth 
while to use chalk. Almost magical effects may be 
produced by a single sentence, sometimes a single 
word, written on the board. If your lesson is the last 
chapter of the Bible, the one word " Come ! " will be 
blackboard work enough. Add to it, if you will, at 
the close of the recitation, this earnest question : 
" Why not to-day? " Every lesson has its key-word 
or its key-sentence. Write it large on your scholars' 
hearts by writing it large upon the blackboard. 

In such work, as in drawing, you may begin with 
simple writing (your best script, however! ) and go on 
to as high a degree of elaborateness as you fancy. 
A printer's book of samples will introduce you to fas- 
cinating and varied forms of letters. Your colored 
chalks may be used in exquisite illumination. You 
may learn from penmen their most bewitching scrolls. 
And all of this will be enjoyed by the children, and 
will contribute to the impressiveness of the truth, pro- 
170 



Through Eye-Gate 

vided you are jealous to keep it subordinate to the 
truth. Otherwise, plain longhand is to be preferred 
to the end of the chapter. 

Another easy way to use the blackboard — still 
without venturing on drawing — is by constructing 
diagrams. What a key to Scripture chronology, for 
instance, is furnished your scholars when you draw a 
horizontal line to represent the four thousand years 
from Adam to Christ, bisect it for Abraham, bisect 
the last half for Solomon, bisect the third quarter for 
Moses, and continue to bisect as long as a famous 
man stands at the bisecting-point ! How it clears up 
the life of Christ to draw two circles, the inner one 
for Jerusalem, the outer for Nazareth, dividing them 
into thirty-three parts for the years of our Saviour's 
life, and running a curved line in and out according 
as his journeys took him to Nazareth and beyond its 
circle, or back to Jerusalem at the feast-times ! Such 
circles will also serve to depict graphically Paul's mis- 
sionary journeys, the outer circle representing Antioch. 
Any series of historical events may well be strung 
along a vertical line divided into decades, and paral- 
lel series, as in the history of«.the northern and south- 
ern kingdoms, along two parallel verticals. An outline 
map, such as the teacher may draw from memory, will 
furnish an excellent basis for another kind of diagram, 
the progress of persons or of series of events being 
traced from place to place by dotted lines, a different 
color for each person or journey or group of incidents. 

Acrostics furnish still another use for the blackboard. 
171 



Sunday-School Success 

For example, draw out from the class by questions a 
list of the prominent characteristics of David. He was 

Daring 

Active 

Vigilant 

Inspired 

Dutiful 

Not until the list is completed does the class see that 
its initial letters spell David's name. You have at- 
tained the element of surprise, so valuable in work of 
this sort. Again, in a lesson on the rich young man, 
or on Dives and Lazarus, or on Zaccheus, write in a 
vertical column the letters of Christ's name, and draw 
straight lines to the right in various directions, as 
shown in the following diagram. Transferring the 
letters, or getting some scholar to transfer them, to 
the points indicated, you quickly insert an E, and it 
reads : " Christ— richest." 




172 



Through Eye-Gate 

The application is obvious, and will never be for- 
gotten. 

Often, in seeking for such an effective presentation 
of a lesson's truth, we hit upon alliteration, and then 
our blackboard work is easy. Three P's : 



Fill them out, as the lesson proceeds, thus : 

pompously 
enitently 



JL ublican JL JL e 



And often, again, our form will be based upon simi- 
lar terminations or beginnings of words, such as : 

{choosing 
reigning 
sinning 

Suggestions and examples of such work might be 
indefinitely multiplied. It is one of the easiest, yet 
one of the most effective, methods of fixing the points 
of a lesson. 

The earnest teacher will be drawn irresistibly from 
the use of the chalk in diagrams, acrostics, and the 
like, to simple drawings ; and by this time he will real- 
ize the importance of simplicity. A set of steps, for 
instance, is easy to draw ; we may use only the pro- 
file ; but the drawing will fix forever in your scholars' 
minds the events in Solomon's life. To a certain 
point the steps are all upward. Yellow chalk shows 
them to be golden. A word written over each step 
i73 



Sunday-School Success 

gives the event it symbolizes. On a sudden the steps 
turn downward, become a dirty brown, each repre- 
senting a sin, and break short off as Solomon takes 
his terrible fall. 

Who cannot draw a number of rough circles? 
They will stand for the stones thrown at Stephen. 
A word or initial written in each will represent the 
different kinds of persecutions that assail faithful 
Christians in our modern days. Who cannot draw a 
shepherd's crook, and write alongside it the points of 
the Twenty-third Psalm, or the ways in which Christ 
is the Good Shepherd? Who cannot draw a large 
wineglass, and write inside it some of the evils that 
come out of it? Who cannot draw a rectangle for 
a letter, and write upon it a direction, to make more 
vivid some of the epistles? or a trumpet inside seven 
circles, to brighten up the lesson on the fall of Jeri- 
cho? As a rule, the very best chalk-talks are the 
simplest, and require the least skill in drawing. 

But how to get the ideas? Where to find the 
pictures? 

Of course, in the first place, from the books of first- 
rate chalk-talkers, such as Pierce's " Pictured Truth," 
Frank Beard's "The Blackboard in the Sunday- 
school," and Belsey's "The Bible and the Black- 
board" (an English book). Of course, also, from 
the many admirable periodicals that publish black- 
board hints, such as the " Lesson Illustrator," the 
" Sunday-school Times," and the teachers' magazines 
of the various denominations. Get hints also from 
174 



Through Eye-Gate 

the blackboard work of the public school and the 
kindergarten, as to manner, if not as to matter. 

But as for the design, your own is the best for you, 
and not another's. Study all the blackboard work 
you can find, and retain whatever gravitates to you ; 
but your own original design is the one you will best 
understand, and in presenting it you will have more 
of that enthusiasm which makes success. 

Learn to find pictures all through the Bible. I 
have just been searching my mind for a Bible text 
that promised nothing in the way of a picture. At 
last I thought that " All have sinned and come short 
of the glory of God " would do. But in another sec- 
ond two pictures popped into my mind. I saw a 
river whose further bank was beautiful with flowers 
and trees, the paradise of "the glory of God," and 
across the river a bridge— lacking its final portion. 
I saw a ladder reaching up into some golden clouds 
back of which shone heaven, the city of " the glory 
of God " ; but all the top rounds of the ladder were 
missing. Bridge and ladder had "come short." 
God's hand was needed, reaching across, reaching 
down, to help us over the sin-gap into " the glory of 
God." I do not believe it possible to find any Bible 
texts, still less any twelve consecutive verses of the 
Bible, that do not hide somewhere a capital picture. 

Read your Bible pictorially. Make sketches every- 
where upon the margin. For practice, often take 
some passage sure to come up in the International 
Lessons, such as Psalm i, Isaiah 53, Proverbs 3, 
i75 



Sunday-School Success 

Matthew 5, Luke 2, John 14, Acts 9, Romans 12, 
1 Corinthians 13, Hebrew 1 1 , James 3. Delve into the 
passage, meditate long over it, and see how many- 
pictures you can get out of it. 

Of the greatest assistance will be a book,— indexed 
as to texts, and also as to subjects, such as " temper- 
ance," "missionary," " resurrection," " courage,"— in 
which you will preserve every drawing you make, and 
all the most suggestive blackboard hints you clip from 
the teachers' magazines, together with simple outlines 
of all sorts of common subjects. These last will be 
particularly useful. There will be a ladder, an anvil, 
a horse, a lily, a broom, a fountain,— anything likely 
to be of use for a symbol. You will clip these from 
advertisements, catalogues, the illustrated papers and 
magazines, and you will find your collection useful in 
many ways. 

I have spoken as if the teacher should do all the 
blackboard work. On the contrary, he should do 
none that he can get his scholars to do for him. No 
matter if they do not do it as well as he. Get them 
to practise beforehand. Let them begin with only 
the simplest work ; they will soon astonish you with 
their proficiency. And the class will take far more 
interest in a poor drawing by one of their own num- 
ber than in a good drawing by you. 

Yes, and even when you preside at the blackboard 

yourself, give the class pencils and paper occasionally, 

and let them copy what you draw. Their attention 

will be assuredly fixed, and an ineffaceable impres- 

176 



Through Eye-Gate 

sion made on their memory. The drawings they 
complete, however crude, they will be glad to carry 
home to show their parents, and treasure as souvenirs 
of the lesson, or keep, if you choose, against the 
coming review day. If you use this method, you will 
soon come to cherish a deeper liking for that prime 
pedagogical virtue, simplicity. 

For a final word : Take pains that your word-pic- 
tures keep pace with your chalk. Don't ask your 
class what you have drawn — that might lead to em- 
barrassing results! Tell them. Put in all sorts of 
graphic little touches, even though you cannot draw 
a tenth of what you are talking about. The man on 
the Jericho road— how full of fear he was as he 
walked; how he whistled to keep up his courage; 
how one robber peeped from behind a rock, and an- 
other whispered, " He's coming!" how they sprang 
out, and he ran, and a third rascal sprang out in front 
and knocked him down; how he shouted, "Help! 
Thieves! Help!" and how only the echo answered 
him in that lonely place— all this must have hap- 
pened many a time on that Jericho road, and you 
have a perfect right to stimulate with such natural 
and inevitable details the imagination of the children. 

That is what they are for — both our word-picturing 
and our chalk-picturing: not to exhibit our nimble- 
ness of wit or of finger, but to quicken the minds of 
the children, — that alone, — and make them more 
eager in the pursuit of truth. 



177 



Chapter XXXI 
Foundation Work 

The work of the primary department lies at the 
foundation of all Sunday-school work. This does 
not mean that there is no chance of a child's becom- 
ing a good Bible scholar and a noble Christian if he 
misses the primary training, but it does mean that 
without a flourishing primary department a school 
can scarcely be called successful, while with it half 
the success of the school is assured. The primary 
teacher molds the soft clay ; her successor with the 
child must cut the hard marble. 

Teaching that thus lies at the foundation must deal 
with fundamental matters, with the greatest lives of 
the Bible, the great outlines of history, the great es- 
sentials of doctrine, the root principles of morality. 
Details are to be filled in later. The danger is that 
the teacher will attempt to teach too much, will ex- 
pect the little ones to know about Hagar when it is 
enough for them to know about Isaac; or about 
Jeremiah, when Daniel would be sufficient ; or about 
178 



Foundation Work 

the order in which Paul wrote his letters, when it 
might well suffice for them to know that Paul wrote 
them. 

But though many questions are too hard to ask, no 
question is too easy, and no point is so simple that in 
these first days you may safely take it for granted. 
Laugh if you please, but I do not think that even 
these days of sand-maps and pricked cards have pro- 
duced a method much more helpful for the primary 
teacher than the old questioning of my boyhood, 
over and over repeated : " Who was the first man? " 
" Who was the strongest man? " " Who was the old- 
est man? " and the like. 

The primary teacher's right-hand man is named 
Drill,— Ernest Drill. No mnemonic help — that is a 
help— is to be despised. Rhymes giving in order the 
books of the Bible, the Commandments, Beatitudes, 
list of the twelve apostles, may wisely be used. No 
memory verse or golden text, once learned, should be 
allowed to lapse into that easy pit, a child's quick 
forgetfulness. Better one thing remembered than a 
hundred things forgotten. Foundation-stones are 
few and simple, but they must be firm. 

Now the first essential, if one would do this foun- 
dation work successfully, is to get a room to work in. 
A room that lets in floods of sunshine and fresh air. 
A room with pretty pictures and bright mottoes on 
the wall, with canary songs and blooming plants. A 
room with little chairs, graded to the scholars' little 
heights. A room with a visitors' gallery for the 
179 



Sunday-School Success 

mothers. Or, if your church was not blessed with a 
Sunday-school architect, then such a room in a house 
next door or across the street, to which your class 
may withdraw after the opening exercises. Or, if 
your work must be done in the church, as so much 
primary work must be, then a temporary room, shut 
off by drawn curtains, or even by a blackboard and 
a screen, is far better than the distractions of the 
open school. 

The blackboard just mentioned, at any rate, the 
room should contain ; the shrewd use of it will create 
an intense interest that will almost cause oblivion of 
the most distracting surroundings. A padded board 
gives the best effects, — such a board as you yourself 
may easily and cheaply make with a pine backing, a 
few layers of cheap soft cloth, and a covering of 
blackboard cloth nailed firmly over all. In the chap- 
ter on blackboard work I have tried to show how' 
easily possible, and at the same time how valuable, is 
the use of the blackboard. If the children are too 
small to read, they may at least know their letters, 
and recognize S for Saul and P for Peter, and a cross 
for Christ, while the immense resources of simple 
drawings are always open to you. 

The primary teacher is fortunate, nowadays, in 
being able to buy, at slight cost, series of pictures il- 
lustrating each quarter's lessons. These pictures are 
either colored brightly or simple black and white, and 
vary in size from four or five square feet to the little 
engravings in the Sunday-school paper. Whatever 
180 



Foundation Work 

picture is used should be hidden until it is time to 
exhibit it, and produced with a pretty show of mys- 
tery and triumph. Some teachers hang these pictures, 
after use, in a " picture-gallery," where the children 
may become familiar with them, and to this gallery 
they may be sent for frequent reference against the 
coming review day. 

After all, the primary teacher's chief reliance for 
purposes of illustration must be natural objects. In 
this reliance we merely imitate the example of the 
great Teacher. The objects to be used will most 
often be suggested by the lesson text itself. A lily, 
a vine, seed, leaven, a door, a sickle, a cake, a cup, 
grass, — are not each of these objects at once associ- 
ated in your mind with passages of Scripture? Hunt 
out the suggested objects, and simply hold them be- 
fore the children as you talk about the lesson, and 
you will find them a wonderful assistance. 

A more difficult process is to discover illustrative 
objects when none are directly suggested in the text 
In a temperance lesson, for instance, there may be no 
mention of the wine-cup, yet you will bring a glass, 
fill it with wine-colored water, and place in it slips of 
paper cut to resemble snakes. On each is written 
some fearful result of drinking alcoholic liquors ; and 
after the children have drawn forth, with pincers, one 
after the other, and read what is written upon it, they 
will not soon forget how many evils come out of the 
wine-cup. 

You may be talking about the imprisonment of 

l8l 



Sunday-School Success 

John the Baptist. Produce a pasteboard chain, 
painted black on one side. Each link tells in red 
letters one of the horrors of his imprisonment, — loneli- 
ness, fear, despair, and the like. Turn over the chain 
and show the underside gilded, the links reading, 
" More faith," " Near to God," " God's favor," " Cour- 
age," " Eternal reward." There was a bright side, 
after all. 

You are on the stumbling-block lesson, and you 
bring in some awkward, rough wooden blocks, on 
which you tack labels as the lesson proceeds: "A 
spiteful temper," " A gossiping tongue," " Envy," 
" Suspicion," "Swearing," " Treating to strong drink," 
" Playing marbles for ' keeps.' " 

You are teaching about the paralytic let down 
through the roof. It has not required many minutes, 
with pasteboard, scissors, and glue, to construct a 
dainty little model of an old-time Jewish house, out- 
side stairs, inner court, overhanging court roof, and 
all. And how the little model illuminates the story ! 
The jail in which Peter was imprisoned, the table 
around which the Last Supper was celebrated, the 
Tabernacle, the Temple, — from the many excellent 
pictures and descriptions obtainable, even quite am- 
bitious models are possible of manufacture. And 
once made, they are aids and joys forever. 

The sand-map has become justly popular. It is 

easily formed, requiring only a shallow tray, some 

sharp, clean sand, pieces of looking-glass for lakes 

and seas, blue yarn for rivers, some rocks for moun- 

182 



Foundation Work 

tains, wooden blocks for houses, dried moss for trees, 
little toy men, boats, horses, and such readily found 
apparatus. 

In turn you can build up, with its accommodating 
materials, the Sea of Galilee and the scene of the 
feeding of the five thousand, all Palestine with the 
courses of Christ's journeys, Asia Minor and Mace- 
donia with the route of Paul on his second great 
missionary journey. Much of this the children them- 
selves will help you prepare, and will learn a great 
deal by so doing. Indeed, the wise teacher will do 
as little as possible herself even in getting ready to 
teach, and will make her scholars themselves her as- 
sistant teachers. 

That is one of the beauties of such kindergarten 
devices as pricking paper and weaving bright yarn 
back and forth to fill up the picture outlined by the 
holes. It is the scholars' work, and not your own, 
and they do not forget their own work. Simple de- 
signs illustrating the lessons can thus be pricked into 
the children's memories at the point of a pin. 

It is best not to confuse the class with a multi- 
plicity of objects, but to fix on a single symbol for 
each lesson, that will stand distinctly for the lesson in 
the weekly and quarterly reviews. The kind of ob- 
ject should constantly vary. If this week it is cut 
out of pasteboard, next week let it be modeled in 
clay, and the following week let it be a picture in 
black and white. The simpler, the better : a cup for 
the lesson at Sychar ; a dried leaf for the parable of 
183 



Sunday-School Success 

the fig-tree ; a square of white cloth for Peter's vision 
on the housetop. Do not produce the object till you 
want it in your teaching, or the children's interest 
will be dissipated before you have need of it. Get a 
little cabinet in which to store all your teaching ap- 
paratus. Do not keep the object in sight after you 
are through with it, or you will lose attention from 
your next point. Remember, in all object-teaching, 
how inferior is any symbol to the truth symbolized, — 
its shadow only, a mere hint of it,— and learn to drop 
the interest-exciting object and use the interest for the 
truth you want to teach. 

In this branch of your work a knowledge of com- 
mon science will prove invaluable. Botany and geol- 
ogy, chemistry, zoology, and astronomy open one's 
eyes to the beauties and marvels of God's handiwork, 
and disclose analogies abounding and true. There 
is much also to learn from the books of models, — 
models for suggestion, of course, and not for slavish 
imitation,— such as TyndalPs "Object-lessons for 
Children," Roads' "Little Children in the Church 
of Christ," and Stall's " Five-minute Object-sermons 
to Children," or his " Talks to the King's Children." 

The most valuable "objects" are the children 
themselves, when you can carry out an illustration 
with their own active bodies. For instance, in teach- 
ing the lesson on the first council at Jerusalem, arrange 
the chairs in two groups, distant as far as possible 
from each other. One is Antioch, the other is Jeru- 
salem. Two picked scholars, Paul and Barnabas, set 
184 



Foundation Work 

out from the Antioch corner toward Jerusalem corner. 
Some of their comrades accompany them part way. 
The scholars at the other side of the room receive 
them with interest. Paul and Barnabas — or the 
teacher for them — tell their story. A Pharisee rises, 
and the teacher puts words in his mouth. Peter rises 
and tells about Cornelius. James, the most dignified 
boy present, gives his decision. Judas and Silas are 
selected to escort Paul and Barnabas back again, 
bearing a letter. 

The visit of the Queen of Sheba, the taking of 
Joseph to Egypt, Paul's vision in Troas and passage 
to Macedonia, the parallel history of the northern and 
southern kingdoms, — indeed, countless events, — may 
be illustrated in this way. The only danger is that 
the whole may seem too much like play ; but this 
danger is easily avoided by an earnest teacher, and 
the gains in interest and remembrance will prove rich 
justification. 

An illustration still simpler, and very effective, may 
be obtained from the children merely by the motion 
of their hands. "Went down from Jerusalem to 
Jericho " — all hands raised high and rapidly lowered. 
"And great was the fall thereof" — the same move- 
ment. "The Queen of Sheba wondered " — hands 
raised in astonishment. " A sower went out to sow " 
—hands sweep to the right and left. These concert 
movements not merely fix the attention of the class, 
but serve as outlet to their restlessness. Some teach- 
ers advise a halt midway in the lesson for the intro- 
185 



Sunday-School Success 

duction of some light gymnastics to rest the class. 
That is well ; but if the same result can be gained in 
immediate connection with the lesson, so much the 
better. 

After all has been said, however, the primary teach- 
er's great art is the art of story-telling. Learn to 
start right in. Preliminary preachment will spoil it 
all. Use short and simple words. Keep clear and 
distinct the order of events, and do not confuse the 
children by going back to take up omitted points. 
Nevertheless,— and this is not a contradiction,— re- 
peat and repeat and repeat, telling each section of the 
story over and over, in different ways and with ever- 
fresh particulars, till the children's slippery memories 
have laid hold upon it. 

Introduce a myriad natural details, for which you 
must draw on a consecrated imagination. You 
should hear Mr. Moody tell a Bible story! It is not 
enough to say that Abraham determined to offer up 
Isaac as a sacrifice. The great, loving soul of the 
evangelist has brooded too long over the Bible for a 
statement so cold as that. He must tell about the 
patriarch's sleepless nights ; about his getting up and 
going over to the bed of the boy so peacefully sleep- 
ing ; about his weeping when no one was watching 
him ; how he couldn't eat his breakfast ; how his heart 
beat whenever he looked at the lad. And long before 
Mr. Moody is through, the great sacrifice is so vivid 
to him and to us that we all weep together, and no 
moralizing is needed. 

1 86 



Foundation Work 

You are not Moodys? No; but hundreds of pri- 
mary teachers are doing just this work, telling to 
their children the Bible stories as they must have 
happened, reading with the heart and telling them to 
the life. Long meditation is needed, persistent 
"putting yourself in his place," and it is even well to 
write out the story in full before you attempt to tell 
it. When you receive the reward, you will count the 
trouble as nothing. 

Music is a great aid in the primary room. If you 
cannot afford a piano, learn how cheap are the " baby 
organs," and how effectively they will lead the chil- 
dren's singing. Even though you work in an extem- 
porized class-room, shut off by screens or a curtain 
from the rest of the school, you can at least use 
" whisper songs." Yes, and these whisper songs may 
often be motion songs, and serve to illustrate the les- 
son. 

At least one song of the hour should bear directly 
on the central thought of the hour, and before it is 
sung you should explain why you call for it. Most 
of the best songs for this purpose will prove to be 
standard hymns, and there is every reason why the 
simplest of these should be taught to the children, 
that they may find as many points of contact as pos- 
sible with the services of the older church. The aid 
of the parents may well be invoked to teach these 
hymns at home to the children, — a helpful task, for 
more than the children's sake, at which to set the 
parents. 

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Sunday-School Success 

The primary song-books contain bright little hymns 
appropriate to introduce prayer, to open and close 
the school, to be sung before Bible-reading and while 
the collection is taken. A clear- voiced assistant, sit- 
ting and singing among the children, will train them 
insensibly, and draw their childish voices into harmony 
with her own. Just as the children will enjoy a class 
name, motto, colors, so they will be delighted to 
select a class song; and this device may be tried, 
together with many others mentioned in the chapter 
on " A Singing Sunday-school." 

Our foundation work will surely fall if it is not 
itself founded firmly on the Bible. Be sure that each 
scholar has his own Bible — and a large -type copy. 
Why is it that the smaller the child, the tinier the type? 
It is not so with the children's other books. How 
can we expect them to take any interest in pages that 
look so black and uninteresting, and that, more- 
over, would ruin their eyes for life if they did read 
them? 

The Bible must not be so expensive that it cannot 
be marked freely. The children will learn much by 
this exercise. A little set of colored pencils may be 
given to each child, for class use only. The golden 
texts and other verses, and the places where the lesson 
story may be read, should all be marked with pencils 
of appropriate symbolic color. The children can 
easily find the place, and the folks at home will know 
just what passages to read to the children and to help 
them learn. 

1 88 



Foundation Work 

Make much of memory verses. We are filling the 
little heads nowadays far more with sand-map puppets 
and blackboard rebuses than with the Word of God. 
Drill often and thoroughly on these verses. Prepare 
a Bible roll by fastening a long strip of manilla paper 
on a spring window-shade roller. Let the lower line 
contain a few initial letters hinting at the memory 
verse concealed just above it. After recitation, pull 
this down for the scholars to compare ; and so proceed 
through the roll. An alphabet of Bible verses may 
thus be learned, or an alphabet of Bible men and 
women. 

One point needs especial emphasis. No matter 
how thoroughly you have told the story, or how fas- 
cinated the children have been held by your recital, 
never consider the hour well spent till you have read 
from the Bible itself the story you have been telling. 
The more delightful and satisfactory your own ac- 
count has been, the more necessary is it to show the 
children that within the covers of the Book are to be 
found all these beautiful stories. 

Part of your foundation work is certainly to teach the 
children to pray. There are many appropriate prayer 
poems, such as, for the beginning of the lesson : 

" A prayer we lift to thee, dear Lord, 
Ere we shall listen to thy word. 
The truth thy Spirit brings from thee 
Help us to study patiently. 

For Jesus' sake. Amen." 

Or this, for the close of the lesson : 



Sunday-School Success 

" Our Father, through each coming day 

Watch o'er our every step, we pray ; 

And may thy Spirit hide the word 

Deep in our willing hearts, O Lord. 

For Jesus' sake. Amen." 

These the class may be taught to repeat in concert, 
with bowed heads. 

One of the best methods is this. Let the teacher 
offer a simple prayer, sentence by sentence or clause 
by clause, the children reverently repeating it after 
her, all heads being bowed. Best of all, of course, 
are the Bible prayers, the prayer psalms, and the 
many noble prayer verses scattered here and there. 
Store the children's memories with these, and in com- 
ing years there will be no stammering or hesitancy 
when, in public or in private, they talk with their 
Father in heaven. 

One of the primary teacher's chief allies is a happy 
temper. If you have it not, get it. An ounce of 
sunshine is better than an iron mountain of scolding. 
The voice alone may make or mar the lesson. Is it 
good-cheery, or goody-goody? How joyous Christ 
must have been! How his little children love fun! 
And how much easier it will be for you to get them 
to love him if you also love fun! 

Indeed, we cannot know too thoroughly the child 
nature. The scientists' study of it is in its infancy, 
but a sympathetic heart will carry you farther in ten 
minutes than all their psychology in a lifetime. As 
you teach, have in mind, not your trials, joys, and 
190 



Foundation Work 

hopes, but theirs. Don't talk about " ambition," but 
about "getting more praise than another girl"; or 
about " covetousness," but about " wishing you, and 
not Tom, had his new bicycle." Don't allegorize ; 
that is a grown-up delight. Don't talk about "the 
hill Difficulty," " the bog of Despond." Do you tell 
me the children enjoy "The Pilgrim's Progress"? 
Yes ; but not as allegory. Vanity Fair is a real town 
to them, and Mr. Pliable a real man. Avoid what 
I call "fanciful " teaching, and the rather build your 
lessons upon actual men and women, so that the 
children may come to know Eli and Gideon, Ruth 
and Martha, as vividly as they know the men and 
women around them. That is better than to know 
Lily Lazy and Matt Mischievous and the Sea of 
Sorrow. 

Review often. When you have reached the point 
where you think the children cannot possibly forget, 
then— review again! Frequently say, "Now, after 
I have finished telling about the lesson, I am going to 
ask Fred to tell me about it ; and after Fred is through, 
I shall ask some one else to tell the same story." 
Often ask questions that can be answered in concert, 
and insist that all shall join in the reply. This will 
usually lead to a repetition that will prove helpful. 
In such concert work, if you do not watch, the more 
forward will be the only ones that will respond, and 
you will be obliged to draw out the timid and repress 
the pert by many a special question addressed to the 
former. 

191 



Sunday-School Success 

Sometimes it is hard to keep order ; always hard, if 
the teacher has not by nature or attainment the face 
and voice and bearing that command order because 
they lovingly and firmly expect it. The teacher 
should be in the room before any scholar arrives. 
Much disorder has its source in those irresponsible 
ten minutes before the school opens. Then, while 
she is teaching, an assistant should sit with the chil- 
dren, ready to check their mischievousness, attend 
quickly to their needs and desires, care for the late 
comers, help them " find the place " in Bibles and 
song-books, and perform many other little offices. 
Some heads of large primary departments establish 
" hospitals," where are sent the children with " sick " 
hands or feet or tongues, — a special class where the 
most uncontrollable are " treated " till they are reported 
" cured." In general, however, if the children are 
interested, they will be orderly ; and if the teacher is 
interested, so are likely to be the scholars. Put into 
the work your whole soul, and you are reasonably 
sure of getting the whole minds of the children. 

Love them! I cannot better sum up the entire 
matter than in those two words. Love them, and 
they will love you and gladly obey you. Love them, 
and you will work hard for them, and will not mind 
the hardness. Love them, and your love will teach 
you how to teach them wisely. And the God of love, 
who loves little children, will give you, week by week, 
the fullness of his joy. 



192 



Chapter XXXII 
The Trial Balance 

Some teachers omit the review, or pass over it in 
a perfunctory way. This is as if a merchant should 
never balance his books, or, taking a trial balance, 
should be heedless of the result. If we are to pros- 
per in this our Father's business, we must be careful 
as any merchant to discover just where we stand with 
our scholars ; we must test their progress often and 
thoroughly, and never rest satisfied or let them rest 
satisfied until they and we are assured that the balance 
is comfortably on the right side of the ledger. 

One reason for the common shrinking from review 
day is because we have not manfully met it at the 
very beginning of the quarter. It is the preview that 
gives success to the review. When the teacher looks 
carefully through the twelve lessons ahead of him, 
grasps the underlying thread that binds them together, 
and forms his plan for a review at the outset, review 
day has lost all its terrors. Then every lesson be- 
comes part of a consistent series. Then the weekly 
i93 



Sunday-School Success 

reviews, which alone make possible a successful quar- 
terly review, lay each a course of a steadily rising 
edifice. 

No clearness of knowledge may be expected unless 
the teacher knows clearly at the start just what it is 
that he expects the scholars to know ; and the build- 
ing grows with double certainty if the little workmen 
themselves are given glimpses of the architect's plans, 
— at least of a "front elevation." " For these three 
months," the teacher may say, "we are to study 
Christ's life as Mark records it. My plan is for you 
to vote each Sunday on the most important facts we 
have studied, — either in the lesson text or in the 'in- 
tervening events.' Sometimes it will be one fact ; it 
will never be more than three. All together there 
are thirty facts we shall learn, and they will make an 
outline history of Christ's entire life." 

How such a scheme, clearly and often stated, will 
clarify and systematize the quarter's work! Three 
or four times during the three months the teacher will 
propound brisk questions covering the points of all 
the previous lessons of the quarter, following this by 
a written test. Let him prepare for each lesson a 
card, on which he prints questions answerable by the 
facts to be learned. Fastening twelve hooks on a 
board, he hangs these cards on the hooks week by 
week, and uses them in these reviews and in the final 
review of the quarter. If the class is one of little 
tots, a symbol for each lesson, cut out of pasteboard 
or consisting of some object, may be hung up in place 
194 



The Trial Balance 

of the card, — such a symbol as a needle stuck in a 
piece of cloth, answering to the story of Dorcas. 

Some such preparation will make thoroughly suc- 
cessful a written examination on review day. The 
questions should be simple and clear, and such as can 
be answered fully in a very few words. They should 
take up only the points on which emphasis has been 
laid throughout the quarter. If the teacher presents 
the plan in a jolly way, the class will enter into it 
heartily, as good fun. 

For a change, now and then invite the scholars to 
bring in, on review day, lists of what each considers 
the ten principal events of the quarter. A compari- 
son is to be made, and the events that receive the 
most votes will constitute a model list. This exercise 
in itself will make a pretty good review. 

An excellent review may be based upon the six 
natural divisions of all lessons, — times, persons, places, 
events, sayings, teachings. The " sayings" are the 
short sentences best worth memorizing. A review 
" quiz " may take up these six points one after the 
other, carrying each over the entire range of lessons, 
sometimes chronologically, but more often at hap- 
hazard. 

A more elaborate plan is to assign each of these 
categories to some scholar the week before, telling 
him, for instance, that you will depend upon him 
alone to fix the location of all the events in the twelve 
lessons. Carrying out the comparison indicated in 
the title to this chapter, you may do very thorough 
195 



Sunday-School Success 

work by getting each scholar to keep a Sunday-school 
ledger. He will open up a page to the account of 
"persons," another to the account of "events," and 
so on, and will make weekly entries on each page. 
The quarterly review will then be indeed his trial bal- 
ance. 

I am very fond of a map review. Using a large 
outline map, sometimes one drawn before the class 
on the blackboard by a scholar who has practised the 
feat, I call for the first event of the quarter's lessons, 
and one of the class places a figure i at the scene of 
the event ; thus with all the events in order. Then, 
reviewing again, I ask, pointing to the map, "What 
was event No. 7, here at Sychar? " or, " Four events 
at Jerusalem — what were they, in order? " 

Another good way to use the map— a map, this 
time, drawn in outline on a large sheet of manilla 
paper— is to employ "stickers," bright bits of gummed 
paper, cut to various shapes. Blue stars, for instance, 
stuck here and there over the map, will indicate the 
points where Abraham is found in a series of lessons. 
They may be numbered, or not. Gold stars may show 
where Christ worked the miracles studied during the 
quarter. All the events in one year of Christ's min- 
istry may be represented by green stars, in another 
year by scarlet stars, or purple stars. The method 
branches out into many fascinating applications. 

Some teachers make large use of the golden texts. 
If these have been emphasized, they may wisely be 
introduced in the review. Write each upon a card. 
196 



The Trial Balance 

If you have artistic talent, you may make each card 
a thing of beauty, to be kept as a souvenir by the 
scholar. These cards will be distributed at random, 
and each scholar will be expected to answer the ques- 
tions, first of the class and then of the teacher, on the 
lesson whose golden text he holds. I would not urge 
the recalling of lessons by titles, for the titles are not 
constituent parts of the lesson ; but the golden text 
usually goes to the heart of the matter. Neither 
would I favor such a plan as the one last mentioned, 
that assigns one lesson to each scholar, unless the 
entire class is drawn into active participation by such 
a questioning from the scholars as I have indicated. 

A pleasant and profitable review for some classes 
is based on the quotable passages in the quarter's 
Scripture. These memorable sentences are written 
on cards, which are distributed evenly. Every scholar 
is expected to tell when, where, and by whom his 
quotation was first spoken, and at the close of the 
exercise each scholar will be called upon to repeat 
all his quotations from memory. Then the teacher 
will gather the cards, mix them up, present the pile 
now to this scholar and now to that, and ask him to 
give the facts about whatever quotation he may draw. 
The success of this method of review, as of all others, 
will largely depend upon its previous announcement, 
the scholars having gone over the quarter's lessons at 
home with this coming test in mind. 

The review may sometimes take the form of a 
contest; you may call it a "question tournament." 
197 



Sunday-School Success 

Appoint leaders, and let them choose sides. Each 
side in turn has the privilege of asking a question of 
the other side. The question must be passed upon 
as fair by the teacher. The scholars on each side 
take turns in answering, and when the scholar whose 
turn it is cannot answer, his entire company has a 
chance. If no one on that side knows the answer, 
the other side gives the correct reply, and thereby 
scores one point. The side with the highest score 
wins the tournament. 

Methods less brisk than this employ pen and ink. 
You may ask the scholars to bring to the class tabu- 
lar outlines of the quarter's history. A little book, 
connected with the quarter's study in some way, may 
be offered as a reward for the best outline, if the 
teacher thinks it wise ; some teachers would not. At 
another time ask each scholar to write a five-minute 
essay on some topic that will require study of all the 
lessons, the topics all being different. These essays 
are to be read before the class, and their themes 
should be as bright as the teacher and her shrewdest 
friends can make them. A variation of this plan is 
to propound to the class a series of questions, all re- 
quiring search through the twelve lessons, and 
allow each scholar to choose a question upon which 
he will speak for two, three, or four minutes before 
the class on review day. 

Whatever your review gives or fails to give, be 
sure it leaves with your class a clear-cut outline or 
summary of the three months' study. Omit the con- 



The Trial Balance 

sideration of lessons not closely connected with the 
story, like some of the temperance, Easter, and 
Christmas lessons. Center upon some graphical 
scheme whenever possible, if it is only a vertical line 
divided into decades along which events may be 
strung, or a circle so divided as to represent Moses' 
life or Christ's. If you can, group the lessons around 
some great personality prominent in them. Never 
fail to bind them together with the golden thread of 
their relation to Christ. Trace through them the 
progress of some thought or event, such as God's 
leadings that developed the Israelites, the growth of 
the Christian church, the unfolding of Christ's life, or 
David's, or Joseph's. Discover what unity the les- 
sons have, and bring it out in the review. 

If these matters have been discussed in the quar- 
ter's lessons, set them in fresh lights. It must be a 
new view as well as a review. 

If you have succeeded well with one form of re- 
view, thank God, and — change the form next time. 
The methods suggested in this chapter are not equally 
valuable in all reviews. Make out a programme in 
January for the four reviews ahead of you, and plan 
them all differently. 

And finally, review your reviews. Review them 
on the review day, going over the same ground at 
least twice, in varying mode ; and in your weekly re- 
views thereafter take occasion now and then to revert 
to the work of the preceding quarter. A matter is 
not learned to-day unless it is learned for all days. 
199 



Sunday-School Success 

If the review discloses weak spots, strengthen 
them. If it discloses excellences, praise them. With 
steady and honest purpose, take on review day the 
trial balance of your work, and may God grant you 
a balance on the heavenward side of the ledger! 



200 



Chapter XXXIII 
At the Helm 

The superintendent of a Sunday-school is not the 
steam of the boat, for all true power comes from the 
Holy Spirit. He does not even tend the fires ; that 
work the teachers must do. Neither does he make 
the chart by which the boat is steered ; that is the 
work of the International Lesson Committee. No ; 
the superintendent stands at the helm. He takes 
orders from the one Captain, and transmits them. 
Now he turns a wheel, now he pulls a bell-rope, now 
he shouts through a speaking-tube. In spite of the 
multiplied details, his work is simple. He has to 
know his ship, the waters, and the weather: that is, 
he has to know God, what he wants him to do ; and 
his scholars, what they are capable of doing ; and his 
teachers, what they are capable of getting the schol- 
ars to do. Knowing these three things, he will not 
fret himself with attempting impossibilities, tasks 
beyond the power of teachers and scholars and so 
aside from God's will for them, but he will know he 



Sunday-School Success 

has succeeded if his teachers work as hard as they 
can in getting their scholars to work as hard as they 
can to learn and do God's will. 

The superintendent's work begins with himself, 
then goes on to his officers, then to his teachers, then 
to his scholars, then to other schools. 

First, looking to himself, he must gain what some 
one lays down as the four essentials of success in 
Christian work: "consecration, concentration, tact, 
and contact." That is, his whole soul must be in his 
work ; he must say, with Paul, " This one thing I 
do " ; he must come in touch with his forces, and he 
must know how to handle them after he touches them. 

There are some men that should never be superin- 
tendents. One of these is Mr. Long, who has to say 
everything in four different ways, each way being 
Broadway. Another is Mr. Twitchall, who jerks out 
his words between the jerks of his nervous body, who 
darts here and there like the snapper of a whip, and 
infects the entire school with the contagion of his 
restlessness. Mr. Black is another, that man of 
gloomy face and sepulchral voice. Mr. Daggart is 
another, for his tongue is dipped in the venom of sar- 
casm and knows only to scold. 

My favorite superintendent is Mr. Short, the son 
of Mr. Bright. He has all his father's good cheer 
His face is full of a sunshine that doesn't need to be 
put into words. He is cordial even more plainly 
than he is spiritual, but because he is spiritual. He 
is businesslike. He is modest. He remembers that 

202 



At the Helm 

he is only one, and the school two hundred, and he 
divides time on about that basis. He knows — oh, 
he knows the value of five minutes ! 

He has the grit of a bulldog, this Superintendent 
Short, son of Mr. Bright. When he is sure he has 
hold of a good thing, he does not dream of letting 
go, any more than those well-persuaded jaws. And 
he has the bulldog's independence and thick skin, but 
with more than bulldog reason ; for is he not respon- 
sible to God alone? If God says, "Good!" what 
matters the sneer of a man? So he does the best he 
knows how, and keeps serene. 

With all his independence he is modest and teach- 
able, is Superintendent Short, son of Mr. Bright. He 
visits other Sunday-schools, and gets hints there. 
He visits the public schools, and gets many valuable 
hints from their superintendents. He reads every- 
thing that has Sunday-school methods in it, and from 
all this he gets hints. He goes around asking every- 
body, " How can I do better work? How can the 
school be improved? " and he receives into a teach- 
able mind the hints he gets. When he has to find 
fault, he first praises what he can. Indeed, praise — 
for a wonder! — is his favorite form of criticism, and 
a stimulating form it is. 

Withal, Superintendent Short is enterprising. He 
sets apart from his busy week regular times for his 
Sunday-school work, and makes a business of it. He 
is ready to spend money as well as time. He keeps 
a notebook crowded with new ideas, and carries them 
203 



Sunday-School Success 

out one after the other in the order of their impor- 
tance, as systematically as a great general conducts a 
campaign. He does not foolishly despise what is 
old and tested, but he knows how to freshen up old 
principles by new applications. He is broad-minded, 
too, with no "fads" or favoritisms, keeping equal 
interest in all departments of school work. And he 
does not stop with the mechanics of the Sunday-school. 
All his enterprise sets before it the one great goal of 
soul-saving. 

Thus far the superintendent by himself; now a 
word about his relation to his officers. Just as the 
failure of a school on the spiritual side is quite often 
due to lack of a good teachers' meeting, so a failure 
on the administrative side is probably due to the lack 
of a "cabinet meeting," where the superintendent 
consults with all his officers and committees, and 
where each gets inspiration and counsel from the 
other. The teachers' meeting should be occupied 
with entirely different matters. It cannot take the 
place of a gathering of the executive, and ought to 
come on a different night. 

This cabinet meeting must be set for a regular 
time, and nothing short of an earthquake must be 
allowed to break it up. Every officer should make 
a report to the cabinet, and the report should be in 
writing. The latter requirement saves time, adds 
dignity, and provides the meeting with definite state- 
ments as a basis for discussion. 

A wise superintendent will utilize all his officers to 
204 



At the Helm 

the utmost. He will make the assistant superinten- 
dent assist. The theory is that the assistant shall be 
able, in the superintendent's absence, to do everything 
the superintendent would do. How can he learn, 
except by doing everything, now and then, when the 
superintendent is present? Many a superintendent 
has worn himself out doing five men's work rather 
than train four men to help him. Elijah trained 
Elisha to be prophet in his stead. If he had not 
done so, I hardly think Elijah would have been car- 
ried to heaven in a chariot of fire. Every worker 
should prepare his successor, should make himself 
unnecessary. 

Let it be the superintendent's ambition, then, to 
create an automatic Sunday-school, one he can leave 
to run itself. He must keep himself in the back- 
ground. He must test the matter by occasional ab- 
sences, on foray for ideas in other schools. He must 
do as little as possible himself,— no danger but it will 
be enough! —and he must get as much as possible 
done by others. So he will create, not a machine, 
but an organism. 

In the third place, — the superintendent and the 
teachers. He must individualize them. As Garfield, 
the young school-teacher, was wont to lie awake 
nights, tracing out on his sheet in the dark a plan of 
the schoolroom, locating each scholar's desk and plan- 
ning for that scholar's growth as he did so, thus the su- 
perintendent should consider separately and regularly 
each teacher's task and abilities, trials and successes. 
205 



Sunday-School Success 

It is his joyous work to encourage them, to note 
improvement in their scholars, to repeat to them the 
kind words of parents, to give them a cheer in their 
arduous and difficult and, for the time, thankless 
tasks. When a superintendent has praised discreetly, 
half his work is done. 

Of course, the superintendent will study his lesson 
as thoroughly as any teacher ; and this is not by any 
means an unnecessary remark, though some may 
think so. Indeed, there are even many occasions 
when he may teach a class, though usually he is best 
left free during the lesson hour to greet the strangers, 
or, watching from some central post like a general in 
battle, to fly to the rescue of some teacher whose 
class may be getting mischievous, restless, or care- 
less. 

For the superintendent should feel at perfect liberty 
to sit quietly down with any class in his school, and 
should do this so often and easily that his coming 
ceases to be a disturbance to teacher or scholars. If 
the superintendent is not welcome, it will be because 
he does not know how to help unobtrusively, and he 
would better stay away. 

The best relations are not possible unless the su- 
perintendent visits the teachers in their homes, and 
gets them to come to his for frequent private consul- 
tations or for an occasional social hour all together. 
The teachers' meeting for the study of the lesson will 
not take the place of these heart-to-heart talks, in 
which sympathy and appreciation, friendly counsel 
206 



At the Helm 

and united prayers, draw the teachers very close to 
their leader. 

In the fourth place, the superintendent must know 
his scholars. If he has time to visit them, each visit 
will count ; but that is in most cases too much to 
expect. Sunday-school socials and picnics will give 
him a chance to push a little further the knowledge 
of them that he will gain by his visits to their classes ; 
but, after all, his best chance is in the passing saluta- 
tion on the street. Often speak of the matter before 
the school, asking the scholars to greet you when 
they meet you ; and then hail every urchin you run 
across as if he were your very own ! If you make it 
a habit to tarry for ten minutes after the Sunday- 
school hour (tired? — never mind! ), both teachers and 
scholars will besiege you then,— provided you have 
made yourself worth besieging ! That you are to be 
in every way the children's hero goes without saying, 
— the glorious big boy to whom all the boys look up 
proudly, the chivalrous knight whose colors all the 
girls are glad to wear, — it goes without saying, that 
is, if you deserve to be superintendent at all! 

Fifthly and finally, the superintendent and other 
schools. He has been getting from them all he can, 
if he is enterprising; he should give to them all he 
can. The large cities have their superintendents' 
unions, composed of those that hold now, or have 
held, this post of honor and responsibility, — and few 
associations are as delightful. Nearly everywhere, 
Sunday-school conventions are available ; and to 
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Sunday-School Success 

these, as gathering up in his own experience whatever 
his school has learned and accomplished, the super- 
intendent should carry his freshest inspiration and his 
wisest plans. No superintendent can live— can be a 
live superintendent — to himself. 

One thing should be said, to close this hasty sketch. 
If the superintendent is all this, or even part of all 
this, in his personal motives, and in his relations to 
officers, teachers, scholars, and other schools, he will 
always be a paid superintendent. He may have no 
salary ; on the contrary, he may be decidedly out of 
pocket ; but the rewards of his labor will be so abun- 
dant, so joyful, that not all the silver and gold in all 
the mines of earth could measure them. 



208 



Chapter XXXIV 
The Superintendent's Chance 

At the opening of the school the superintendent 
hasn't half a chance ; at the close he has a large 
chance — as large, in fact, as he is. At the opening 
the superintendent is merely a master of ceremonies 
to usher in the work as buoyantly as possible ; at the 
close he is a teacher, the high priest of all the teach- 
ers. His work of introduction is important, but far 
more important is his work of peroration. The last 
five minutes furnish his chance to gather all the teach- 
ings of the hour into one point and press it home. 

i. It is his chance. Now or never let him be 
original. Let him study his talents ; some can work 
best with chalk, some with anecdotes, some with 
questions, some with exegesis, some with exhortation. 
Let him get up a specialty for those five minutes and 
burnish it till it shines. Whatever method he chooses 
should be filled with his personality and serve to im- 
press his personality upon the school. It is life that 
tells on life, and the more of himself the superinten- 
209 



Sunday-School Success 

dent puts into these five minutes the more will this, his 
chance, prove his success. 

2. It is his chance to gather all the teachings of 
the hour. Not that he will try to " cover the ground " 
of the entire lesson. In that case his chance would 
turn out his mischance. He will not try, either, to 
give something for each class of scholars, for all that 
he gives must be for all classes. Among all the 
thoughts of all the departments, primary, intermediate, 
and senior, there is a single golden thought like a 
golden thread. These strands he must seize and 
weave them, in his five minutes, into a golden cord. 

3. It is his chance to gather all the teachings of 
the hour into o?ie point. Probably every teacher in 
the school has been trying to teach too much. The 
lesson was intended for a wedge, but they have been 
using the blunt end. Turn it around. Illustrate the 
matchless might of simplicity. Do not think that, 
because the lesson was on the envy of Joseph's breth- 
ren, the theme of envy has become hackneyed, and 
you must talk about Jacob and Reuben and the 
Midianites and God's overruling providence. If the 
teachers have worked well, the scholars will be eager 
for further words on envy; if they have worked 
poorly, all the more need of a forcible presentation 
of the main theme. 

4. It is his chance to gather all the teachings of 
the hour into one point and press it home. His will 
be a lively school in proportion as it influences life. 
When the moral truths of our lessons are fixed in the 

210 



The Superintendent's Chance 

life, the facts connected with them will be fixed in 
the mind. Let the superintendent ask himself, for as 
many scholars of varied age and character as he can, 
" How might this lesson change his life, her life, for 
the coming week— forever ? " Put the " snapper " on 
the hour. Let it be seen that you expect definite re- 
sults in spirit and conduct. 

Some urge that the superintendent should be mute 
at the close of the lesson hour, lest his words destroy 
the effect of the teachers' exhortations. To be sure, 
he may emphasize what they have not emphasized, 
though even this danger is very slight if the superin- 
tendent is careful to seize on the lesson's central 
thought ; but if the impression made by the teacher is 
endangered by a few earnest words from the superin- 
tendent, what will be left of it by the close of the 
conversation around the dinner-table? 

A closing word regarding the superintendent's 
questions. In no better way than by questions can 
he win and hold the school's attention. Those given 
in the various lesson helps are intended to be simply 
suggestive of possible matter and manner. Five 
things are essential: (i) that the questions be simple 
enough to be understood by the youngest; (2) that 
they lead up to a point valuable enough to interest 
the oldest ; (3) that they can be answered by a few 
words, preferably by one; (4) that they be presented 
in a brisk and businesslike way ; (5) that prompt an- 
swers from all parts of the school together be insisted 
on, the answer being called for again and again till 



Sunday-School Success 

all have connected themselves with it. Half a dozen 
such questions should lead up skilfully to the main 
lesson of the hour, which should receive brief but 
pointed application by anecdote, blackboard, or 
exhortation. 

All this is a high ideal. " To attain it will require," 
you say, " much more than five minutes." You are 
right, Brother Superintendent : five minutes before the 
school, but 07ie hour or even two hours of prayerful 
preparation at home. However, it is your chance. 
Do not ignobly lose it. 



Chapter XXXV 
The Sunday-School and the Weather 

A rainy day is the best test of a Sunday-school, 
and its best opportunity. 

For the scholars it is a sieve, separating the zealous 
workers from the careless ones. 

For the general school it is an index, since if Christ 
is not "in the midst" of the few on rainy days, 
surely the many on sunny days are not wont to gather 
"in his name." 

For the teacher it is a revealing question : " Do 
you teach for the excitement and praise of crowded 
benches, or is a single soul, with its issues of life and 
death, inspiration enough? " 

It is the superintendent's chance, because then he 
learns his staff, the pick, the enthusiastic nucleus, of 
his school. It is a good day for "setting balls to 
rolling." 

It is the scholar's chance, — his chance to show 
appreciation of the school by attendance ; his chance 
for help on questions that try his soul. 
213 



Sunday-School Success 

It is the teacher's chance. He will never draw 
close to his scholars if not now; never see their 
nobility or their faults if not through the troubled lens 
of a rainy day. 

It is the opportunity of the general school. Prayer- 
meeting workers often observe that the meetings 
held on stormy evenings are always the best, because 
every attendant feels it his duty to take active part. 
For the same reason a rainy day brings out the met- 
tle of a Sunday-school. The bashful are impelled to 
greater boldness, the careless to stricter attention. 
Responsibilities are thrown upon unwonted shoulders. 
Many a Sunday-school worker has been developed 
by rainy days. 

Teachers must do their scolding for poor atten- 
dance, if ever, on the days of crowded seats, because 
then only are the truants present. Have nothing but 
words of good cheer for the few who come on stormy 
days. 

We are often told about preachers who, as a re- 
ward and an incentive, wisely preach their best (if 
they can) on rainy days, to the faithful few. For 
such days the teacher also must make his highest 
preparation, because then his work will produce best 
results ; because then he will need to bring most in- 
spiration with him, as he gets none from well-filled 
seats ; because his scholars then not only deserve his 
best, but, lacking the zest of numbers, need his best 
to hold their attention ; because they will appreciate 
better what they have come through difficulties to get. 
214 



The Sunday-School and the Weather 

On rainy days there are many late comers, and 
therefore many fine chances for practical Christianity. 
Greet them cheerfully, if you must stop your finest 
exhortation to do it. Such a close will be its most 
eloquent period. 

If you investigate tactfully the absences of rainy 
days, you will often come upon a truer knowledge of 
the home life and needs of your scholars than any 
sunshiny observations could give you. 

On rainy days, if ever, scholars should be sure of 
finding their own teacher ; yet, as human nature is, on 
rainy days there is always necessary some fusion of 
classes. The teachers of joined classes may do much 
good or infinite harm. Criticism, expressed, or im- 
plied, of the plans or precepts of the other teacher, is 
a poison which has few antidotes. If he has been 
teaching false doctrine, he, not his scholars, is to be 
told that fact. And, on the contrary, a word of wise 
praise for whatever of solid acquirement you may see 
in his scholars, as it comes from an. outsider, will dis- 
cover marvelously their teacher to them, and their 
possibilities to themselves. 

As we need to emphasize the advantages of bad 
weather, so we need to remember the dangers of fine 
weather. Now, the teacher must be mindful not to 
lose the individuals in the crowd, or his teaching 
sense in the temptation to harangue. Now, the 
superintendent must remember that his unifying and 
organizing skill is especially needed. If rainy days 
are best for study and personal work, fair days, and, 
215 



Sunday-School Success 

above all, hot days, are best for singing and concert 
drill in reading and questioning. 

As our days, so shall our strength be, if we are 
Christ's, dear Sunday-school workers; but different 
kinds of days need different kinds of strength. 



216 



Chapter XXXVI 

A Profitable Picnic 

A large number of Sunday-schools are in the habit 
of holding a picnic every summer. In spite of the 
countless jests at the expense of the Sunday-school 
picnic, the custom is in every way commendable. 
Where can teacher and scholars, superintendent and 
teachers, better come into that familiar, every-day 
contact that tells so much of character and for char- 
acter, than out under the open sky and in the merry 
meadows ? And yet why is it that the very word 
"picnic" makes most Sunday-school teachers groan, 
and presents to the superintendent's mind a picture 
no more delectable than of hot, dusty cars, pushing, 
quarreling children, red-faced teachers, and lunches 
seized on by ants? 

Of course, in moving so large a body of people, 
especially of youngsters, many untoward events are to 
be expected ; but nevertheless, when the picnic is not 
a conspicuous success, there is usually one reason : it 
was not well planned for. So many managers of 
217 



Sunday-School Success 

picnics are nothing but transportation managers! 
Getting a reduction of railroad fare, packing and un- 
packing the lunches, filing the children in and out of 
the cars, — such details sum up their plans. As for 
entertainment on the picnic grounds, — why, turn the 
children loose, and they will take care of that part 
of it! 

On the contrary, he is a wise man that can enter- 
tain himself well and profitably for a day without aid 
from outside. The feat is impossible for most chil- 
dren. How well I remember my own childish miser- 
ies on holidays because I couldn't think of anything 
I wanted to do ! On the haphazard plan your picnic 
will go uproariously for a time, but it will soon " fray 
out" into a tangle of ennui and quarrels. 

In this brief chapter, then, I want to suggest merely 
one out of many schemes for a profitable picnic. 
It will include in the day's plans all ages and classes, 
and afford pleasure for mind and spirit as well as 
body. 

In the first place, arrange with great care a pro- 
gramme of contests. If it is a joint picnic, some of 
the contests will be between representatives of the 
Sunday-schools that take part; otherwise, between 
classes and individuals of the one Sunday-school. 
Bring in the girls as well as the boys, and the men 
and women as well as the children. Running, sack- 
races, three-legged races, pole and rope climbing, 
boat-races, croquet and tennis matches, base-ball (a 
game among the old men will cause much amuse- 
218 



A Profitable Picnic 

ment), the marching of competing companies, broom 
or flag drills for the girls, leaping, slow races on the 
bicycle, throwing the hammer, soap-bubble contests 
—why, the number of these sports is legion. 

Just a few hints : — 

Give no prizes, but " honorable mention." 

Let the contests be well planned and advertised 
beforehand, and set the scholars to training for them. 

Give every one a printed programme (which may 
be worked off on a manifolder), and so arrange it that 
the entire company, if possible, may be spectators of 
each contest. 

Make everything as short and snappy as you can. 

Throughout the programme, work in all classes and 
ages as best you may. Don't, for instance, put all 
the contests in which the little ones engage in the 
same part of the day. 

In the second place, arrange a literary and religious 
programme that shall give a spiritual application to 
all these physical contests. Organize a Sunday-school 
choir, which, after careful previous practice, will sing 
some of the many songs that treat the Christian life 
as a race, or a wrestling, or a battle. Some of the 
Bible passages of similar tenor should be recited. 
Poems may be repeated bearing the same lesson. 
And the brightest of the scholars and teachers, of 
course not omitting your pastor, will give some very 
brief little essays or talks along this same line. This 
part of the day's programme may fitly be placed just 
after lunch, when in the heat of the day the athletes 

2 19 



Sunday-School Success 

will wish to rest, and when all will be ready to sit 
down and listen. 

Much will depend on the master of ceremonies for 
the day. Let him be the jolliest man you can find, 
but withal a man of deep consecration, who can make 
all feel that, whether they eat or drink, or play games, 
or whatever they do, they must do all for the glory 
of God. In this spirit alone can you hope to have 
a profitable picnic. 



220 



Chapter XXXVII 

A Singing Sunday-School 

Lifeless singing means, usually, a dead Sunday- 
school. Many a superintendent might greatly increase 
the vigor of his school by getting a little snap into the 
music. Different ways of singing will not of them- 
selves solve the problem, but they will go far toward 
it. Here are a few methods which will add to the 
singing the variety that is the spice of it as well as of 
nearly everything else. 

Try reading the song in concert before it is sung. 
It would puzzle most even of us older folks to tell, 
after we have sung a hymn, what is in it. Concert 
reading brings out unsuspected beauties of thought, 
and the hymn will be sung afterward with fresh zest 
and with fuller intelligence. The superintendent may 
vary this plan by reading the stanzas alternately with 
the school, or the girls may alternate with the boys. 
Occasionally get a single scholar to read the hymn 
before the school, or, what is far better, to commit it 
to memory and recite it. 

221 



Sunday-School Success 

Indeed, memory hymns, to be committed to mem- 
ory by the entire school, and sung without the book, 
will prove very popular. Select songs that are worth 
learning for their words as well as for their music, — 
a thing which, alas! cannot be said of all our Sunday- 
school songs. One memory hymn a month might 
possibly be achieved, and your children will rapidly 
grow independent of hymn-books, as their grandsires 
were. 

They may like to vote upon a school hymn for the 
entire year, and learn it in this way, — one that shall 
serve as a sort of rallying song throughout the twelve- 
month. The various classes, too, may be encouraged 
to select their own class songs, and to practise them 
at their class socials. Then, once in a while, the 
entire school may listen while one or two classes sing 
their class hymns. 

It would do no harm, either, for the superintendent 
occasionally to bind the children's interest to the 
singing by asking them to call for their favorites, that 
the school may sing them. This privilege may be 
granted to the classes or scholars that have the best 
record in attendance. 

It will add interest to the singing if bits of pleasant 
information are sometimes given about the authors of 
our familiar songs. At the opening of the session, 
for instance, tell something about the blind hymn- 
writer, Fanny Crosby, and then let all the songs sung 
that day be by her ; or tell a little about Miss Haver- 
gal's beautiful life, or give a few bright anecdotes 



A Singing Sunday-School 

about Dr. S. F. Smith, and then use nothing but their 
hymns. Some such book as Hezekiah Butterworth's 
"Story of the Hymns" (New York: The American 
Tract Society. $1.75), or Duffi eld's " English Hymns: 
Their Authors and History " (New York: The Funk 
& Wagnalls Co. $3), will afford a plentiful supply of 
biographical material. Once in a while get one of 
the scholars to read one of these hymn anecdotes, or 
to tell it in his own words. 

Prayer songs— there are many most beautiful ones 
— may be used as prayers, all heads being bowed 
while they are sung softly ; or they may be read in the 
same way. 

Antiphonal songs are easily arranged. Choose 
two classes of good singers in distant parts of the 
room, and let one sing the verses and the other the 
chorus of some suitable song. A hymn arranged in 
the form of question and answer, such as "Watch- 
man, tell us of the night," or " Art thou weary, art 
thou languid ? " is very effective when sung in this 
way, or when read in dialogue, the superintendent 
taking the questions and the school the answers. 

Other dispositions may be made, for the sake of 
variety. Get the girls to sing the stanzas, and the 
boys the choruses, or the girls to sing one verse, and 
the boys the next, all uniting on the choruses ; or, let 
the school to the right of the center alternate in sing- 
ing with the school to the left. Send a company of 
singers into another room, with closed doors, and 
have them sing the chorus as an echo, very softly. 



Sunday-School Success 

Get the teachers to sing the stanzas of some song, 
while the whole school sings the refrain. 

Solos are good once in a while, especially if you 
make the school the chorus for them. A quartette 
of picked singers may be introduced very delightfully 
on occasion, especially if their selection is germane to 
the lesson topic, and, best of all, if the quartette is 
chosen from the scholars themselves. The primary 
department will hugely enjoy singing one of their 
songs to the main school, and the older scholars will 
enjoy it quite as heartily. 

Possibly a Sunday-school choir might be organized 
to advantage, the strong singers from among the more 
mature scholars being banded together to practice new 
music and lead the singing. School orchestras have 
been very useful in many churches, the boys being 
proud to serve the school with violin and cornet. 

Most useful, however, in adding zest to the sing- 
ing, are the simple changes and variations that 
shrewdly call attention to the old by putting it in a 
new place, or " putting it " in a new way. For in- 
stance, you might call fresh attention to a beautiful 
song by bidding all sing it without their books, while 
you " line it out " earnestly and brightly. You might 
preface a hymn with a sentence or two telling why 
you think it just the hymn to sing in connection with 
the day's lesson. You might piece together several 
verses from different songs, and ask the school to sing 
them in immediate succession, without prelude or 
interlude, noting the connection and progress of the 
224 



A Singing Sunday-School 

thought. You might stimulate the scholars in this 
and that corner by asking now one class and now 
another to consider themselves the leaders in the song 
next to be sung. You might have occasional " new- 
hymn " days, in which will be sung no song ever tried 
by the school. You might even steal ten minutes, 
on very rare occasions, for song services, carefully 
planned so as to bear effectively on the lesson for the 
day. The ways are almost endless whereby a music- 
loving, child-loving superintendent can introduce his 
two loves to each other. 

A few more general suggestions. First, to the 
organist or pianist. Why do you think it necessary 
to hammer out an entire piece of music before you 
let the fidgety children sing it? They already know 
every note of it, and are not interested in your per- 
formance ; nor is any one else. They can find the 
place quite as quickly as you can. Except in the 
case of new songs, do let us off with the chord, and 
we'll canonize you as a model of self-restraint and 
good sense. 

Then to the precentor, or whoever is responsible 
for the time you keep. Why is it so slow? I never 
could see why hymns should be sung so drawlingly as 
to make it quite impossible to grasp their thought. 
Time yourself in singing your next hymn, then read 
aloud the same hymn, forcing yourself to occupy the 
same time, and you will see why it is that our singing 
leaves our minds quite absolute blanks. This griev- 
ous fault must be remedied with the children if the 
225 



Sunday-School Success 

singing of hymns is ever to be, to the average grown- 
up, an intellectual and spiritual as well as a physical 
occupation. 

And, to the same end, why is it that your school 
can sing readily, even without the book, the first two 
or three stanzas of so many songs, while every stanza 
beyond is an unknown land to them ? It is because, 
owing chiefly to the slowness of our ordinary singing, 
we seldom compass the whole of a hymn. At the 
close of a well- written hymn is the climax, the thought 
up to which the whole has led, which binds it all to- 
gether. Our songs, if they are to get hold upon our 
minds and lives, must be sung beyond their prelude, 
sung straight through. 

To get hold of minds and lives , — that must be the 
end sought by all our singing. 



226 



Chapter XXXVIII 

A Praying Sunday-School 

In no way can more Christianity be taught in less 
time than by a good prayer. A Sunday-school that 
is not opened with the right kind of prayer remains 
tight shut until the teachers get hold of it, while the 
right kind of prayer at the close of the lesson hour 
rivets the lesson on the week to come. 

Yet I know of no point in Sunday-school manage- 
ment regarding which superintendents are more care- 
less, The children must listen to Magellan prayers 
that circumnavigate the globe ; to mechanical prayers, 
cast in stereotyped forms; to officious prayers that 
volunteer to teach the coming lesson ; to peacock 
prayers that flaunt big words and fine phrases ; to 
wrinkled prayers, dealing with experiences into which 
the children will not grow for three decades. In some 
schools the superintendent always makes the prayer 
himself, praying in the same terms and tones and 
order for the same things. Elsewhere the superin- 
tendent invites others to perform this service, but, 
227 



Sunday-School Success 

with pitiless impartiality, calls upon all that will, heed- 
less whether they are capable or totally unfit for the 
difficult duty. 

For it is not easy to guide the devotions of these 
varied ages and characters. The words must be so 
simple that the youngest can understand them. The 
thoughts must be so noble as to furnish an uplift to 
the oldest. The expressions must be direct, as in the 
realized presence of Christ. The prayer must be 
brief, and bright, and deeply in earnest, sincere as a 
child. 

To perform this task, therefore, no one should be 
invited merely for policy's sake, merely because he is 
a visiting clergyman, a church officer, or a good- 
hearted layman. Ask no one that does not know the 
glorious language of a child's prayer. Give notice 
beforehand, since this prayer, if any, should be thought 
over and prayed over. And if you fear the prayer 
will lack a certain quality, shrewdly incorporate its 
name in your invitation, asking for a brief prayer, or 
a simple prayer, or a prayer about few things. 

I wonder that this exercise is so seldom fixed upon 
the children's attention and interest by their own vocal 
participation in it. Indeed, it is not always that the 
school is able to repeat the Lord's Prayer together 
with the freedom and force born of long custom. 
The school may easily be taught to chant the Lord's 
Prayer, and that may be made most genuine praying. 
There are many suitable short Bible prayers that 
children might learn to say together, such as " Let 
228 



A Praying Sunday-School 

the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my 
heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength 
and my redeemer." Indeed, there are many prayer 
psalms that could be learned entire, the concert 
repetition of which would greatly enrich the Sunday- 
school hour. If yours is a model school, every 
scholar has his Bible, and Scripture prayers, not 
committed to memory, may be read in concert. 
And, besides, what more impressive conclusion to the 
session than the " Mizpah benediction," in which all 
voices join, or, perhaps better, the beautiful benedic- 
tion in Numbers 6 : 24-26, "The Lord bless thee, 
and keep thee," etc.? 

Then there is the hymn-book. If it is a good one, 
it contains many beautiful prayer hymns. Let the 
scholars all bow their heads, and sing softly Miss 
Havergal's tender consecration hymn, or " Nearer, 
my God, to thee," and you will find all hearts indeed 
drawn nearer heaven. Occasionally let the school 
read together one of these same hymns, also with 
their heads bowed. 

And, by the way, — though it deserves more than a 
"by the way,"— insist on the bowing of the head, — 
not that the attitude is important in itself, but the 
reverence that the attitude arouses is of the highest 
importance. Wait till all heads are bowed before 
you begin the prayer or permit another to begin it. 
The half-minute of quiet or semi-quiet needed to gain 
this end is not ill-bestowed. Moreover, I should 
strongly advise you to go one step farther, and once 
229 



Sunday-School Success 

in a while have the entire school go down on their 
knees. This, the normal attitude of prayer, the chil- 
dren should be taught to assume in public, at least so 
often that it will not seem to them forced or unnatural. 

Have you tried silent prayer? A blessed exercise 
it is, and one the children will love. Ask them to 
bend their heads or kneel, and then in perfect silence 
to pray for their teachers, or their pastor, or their dear 
ones at home, or some sick scholar. After a minute 
the superintendent will tenderly add a few closing 
sentences of vocal prayer. 

And have you tried a chain prayer, — a prayer 
started by a leader, who will also close it, to which ten 
or twenty of the scholars contribute sentences of praise 
or petition? You will be astonished to see how 
many of the scholars will join in these prayers, — you 
will be astonished, that is, unless you are familiar with 
the training along this line so nobly accomplished in 
our modern young people's religious societies. 

Still another way to obtain the scholars' careful 
heed to the prayer is to establish a form with which 
the superintendent will always begin his prayer, and 
which the entire school will repeat with him. The 
opening sentences of the Lord's Prayer may be used 
for such a purpose. Then, at the close of the prayer, 
after "for Jesus' sake," let all the scholars say 
"Amen." 

An occasional Sunday-school prayer-meeting, held 
for ten minutes at the close of the lesson hour, will 
do much to inspire in the school a deeper spirit of 
230 



A Praying Sunday-School 

worship ; that is, if the scholars themselves take part, 
and not the teachers only. And these Sunday-school 
prayer-meetings are magnificent opportunities for 
drawing the net. Hold them in a small room, that 
nearness may warm the coals of devotion to a glow. 
Do not hold them too frequently to be burdensome. 
Keep them brief and earnest. Let the teachers work 
for them in their classes, and use them as tests for 
their teaching. Above all, expect conversions in 
them, and, if you are faithful and faith-filled, you will 
get them. 

This use of the scholar in the devotions of the school 
should be extended to his home. The superintendent 
may ask the scholars to pray every day during the 
coming week for the school, or for their teacher, or 
for their next lesson, that it may bring some one 
nearer Christ. For several weeks there may stand in 
bold letters on the blackboard a list of things that 
should be prayed for at home. The teacher, of 
course, must enforce these recommendations. If he 
will courageously hold once in a while a little prayer- 
meeting with his scholars, in the class-room, about 
the class-table, or, best of all, at his own home or at 
one of theirs, he will thereby teach them as much 
Christianity as otherwise he might in a year. 

Indeed, the teacher has much to do in making 
yours a praying Sunday-school. To say nothing 
about the teacher's prayers for his scholars, which 
will be like steam to his pedagogic engine, and to say 
nothing about the united prayers of the teachers in 
231 



Sunday-School Success 

the teachers' meetings, the teacher's conduct during 
the prayer in the school is in itself half the scholars' 
attention, the knowledge on the part of the scholars 
that their teacher is praying for them will spur their 
home devotions, and the teacher's simple, ready par- 
ticipation in the school prayers will prompt their own. 
An excellent occasional method of opening the school 
is by a succession of very brief— almost sentence — 
prayers from six or eight of the teachers. A frequent 
topic for discussion in the teachers' meeting should 
be how best to inculcate in the school the spirit of de- 
votion, since this great result is to be won only by the 
co-operation of all the working forces of the school. 
Much is gained in this matter if you gain variety. 
Sometimes ask the older scholars themselves, several 
of them in succession, to offer brief prayers at the 
opening of the school. Sometimes let the superin- 
tendent's opening prayer attract attention by its 
exceeding brevity, — only three or four sentences, 
embodying a single petition. Do not place the 
prayer always at the same place in the programme ; 
now let it come before the singing, now after; now 
lay emphasis on the prayer introductory to the lesson 
hour, now on the prayer that closes the hour and 
seeks to drive home its lessons. Be dead in earnest, 
— no, be alive in earnest. Be thoughtful and versa- 
tile. Be bright and cheery and simple-hearted and 
sympathetic. In these prayers, that should furnish 
the life-blood to the school, be all things to all — chil- 
dren, if by all means you may win one of them. 
232 



Chapter XXXIX 
S. S. and C. E. 

A word must be said about the co-operation of the 
Sunday-school and that other great modern agency 
for work with the youth, the young people's religious 
society. Whatever is said will be as true of the 
Epworth Leagues, Baptist Unions, and other denomi- 
national organizations as of the Christian Endeavor 
societies ; but since the latter, like the Sunday-schools, 
are found in all denominations, and since my own 
especial work lies among them, it will be quite ap- 
propriate in this connection, as well as less confusing, 
to use only the one name, Christian Endeavor. 

Though of ages so unequal, " S. S." and " C. E." 
are sisters. Both are international and interdenomi- 
national. Both apply the principle of age classifica- 
tion to religious work. Both are strongly evangelical, 
and earnest seekers of souls. Both are held in strict- 
est subordination to the church. And both are Bible 
lovers; for the Christian Endeavor pledge requires 
daily reading of the Bible, and the weekly prayer- 
233 



Sunday-School Success 

meeting topic calls out no slight amount of Bible 
study. Moreover, this topic is usually in line with 
the week's Sunday-school lesson, — not the same as the 
latter, but suggested by it. The two agencies are at 
work in different fields. The one puts in, the other 
draws out. The one studies, the other practices. 
The Christian Endeavor society affords an excellent 
test for the Sunday-school, and is its complement. 
Whatever helps the one aids the other, and the two 
should labor hand in hand. 

There are even some things that the Sunday-school 
might learn from its little sister. The principle of the 
pledge has proved attractive and powerful in the 
Christian Endeavor society. Why not adopt it in 
the Sunday-school, asking the scholars for voluntary 
vows that they will attend regularly and will spend 
fifteen minutes a day in studying their lessons ? The 
monthly consecration meeting maintains wonderfully 
the spirituality, zeal, and discipline of the Christian 
Endeavor society. Why not a monthly consecration 
and experience meeting of Sunday-school teachers ? 
Three or four Christian Endeavor societies cannot 
exist in the same town without forming a local union 
for mutual encouragement and consultation. Sun- 
day-schools have their county conventions, but why 
not also this beautiful interdenominational fellowship 
among the Sunday-schools of every community? A 
large part of the remarkable success of Christian 
Endeavor is due to its being a work of the young 
people for themselves. There is close pastoral and 
234 



S. S. and C. E. 

church supervision, and it is welcomed ; but the En- 
deavorers feel that it is their society, for whose honor 
they are responsible, and whose victories depend upon 
themselves. As far as possible, this spirit should be 
incorporated in the Sunday-school, so that the Bible 
study may not seem a work impressed on the schol- 
ars, but elected by them, — their work, and not their 
teachers'. 

How can the Christian Endeavor society help the 
Sunday-school? Greatly in its prayer-meetings, by 
remembering the allied Sunday-school topic of the 
morning. Here is a chance for the teacher to enlarge 
upon some theme treated too hurriedly in the lesson 
hour, and for scholars to show their appreciation of 
their teacher by repeating some thought he brought 
out in the morning. If rightly managed, the Chris- 
tian Endeavor meeting furnishes an admirable oppor- 
tunity for advertising the Sunday-school, and prac- 
tically applying the truths there taught. 

But the help given may be far more direct. Every 
well-organized Christian Endeavor society has a Sun- 
day-school committee, whose members put themselves 
under the direction of the superintendent, and make 
it the one object of their term's work to push in all 
possible ways the interests of the Sunday-school. 

The members of this committee are usually chosen 
with an eye to their fitness for acting as substitute 
teachers. Sometimes the committee constitutes itself 
a normal class and studies the lessons a week in ad- 
vance, considering especially the way to teach effec- 
235 



Sunday-School Success 

tively. On the next Sunday, therefore, the superin- 
tendent will find any of these Endeavorers well 
prepared to fill a vacancy. 

Everywhere, too, these Sunday-school committees 
help the busy teacher to look after the absent schol- 
ars and to care for the sick. It is far easier for these 
young people than for the teacher to learn the real 
causes of absence and to urge better attendance. In 
some schools the teachers fill out blank cards every 
Sabbath, giving the names of absentees or of the sick 
on whom they would like to have the Sunday-school 
committee call. These cards are collected, the calls 
made, and then the Endeavorers report to the teacher. 

A kindred ministration is the gathering of new 
scholars. In many ci.ies the Sunday-school commit- 
tee has conducted a fruitful house-to-house canvass 
for new scholars, sometimes canvassing at the same 
time for new members of their society. Other com- 
mittees distribute printed cards of invitation. Others 
organize " recruiting squads " among the scholars, and 
give little rewards to those that do the best work. 
Others make it their business to hunt out all the young 
strangers in the morning congregation and give them 
a personal invitation to the school. Still others dis- 
tribute among the scholars " suggestion blanks," on 
which each scholar writes the names and addresses 
of young folks that might be won for the school. 
These Endeavorers call at the strangers' homes and 
go with them to the school, while others stand ready 
to welcome all strangers at the door and show them 
236 



S. S. and C. E. 

to appropriate classes. Thus they follow them up, 
that it may not be a case of " light come, light go." 

The Endeavorers, under the direction of their Sun- 
day-school committee, may be very helpful in the 
music. A choir or an orchestra may be organized 
from their numbers. An occasional song appropriate 
to the lesson may be rendered as a solo or quartette. 
When Sunday-school concerts are to be given, the 
Endeavorers will afford trained assistance. But 
especially the committee should become thoroughly 
familiar with the Sunday-school song-book, so that 
its members, scattered over the room, may carry with 
vigor any unfamiliar hymn, and give force and 
sprightliness to all the singing. 

The Sunday-school librarian will find among the 
Endeavorers some efficient aids. The Sunday-school 
committee may advertise the new books in the Chris- 
tian Endeavor meetings, and get the society to add 
to the library certain books of especial interest and 
helpfulness to Endeavorers. Sunday-school library 
socials have been held by some societies, the evening's 
exercises being so planned as to call attention to the 
best books in the library. The Endeavorers will help 
in covering books, in hunting up those that are lost, 
in reading new books and giving an opinion regard- 
ing them. Where subscriptions are taken for special 
papers or magazines, the Sunday-school committee 
will be glad to undertake this work. After these 
periodicals have been read, they will gather up the 
old copies to send to the hospitals. 
237 



Sunday-School Success 

The decorating for Christmas and Easter exercises 
or for Children's Day may be assigned to the Christian 
Endeavor society. The Endeavorers may be set to 
gathering in the scholars for Rally Day. They should 
be called upon for help on all such special occasions. 

Some societies give parties now and then to the 
classes that have the best record, or divide the school 
into sections according to age, and entertain each 
section in turn at a Christian Endeavor social, clos- 
ing the series with a pleasant evening spent with the 
teachers and officers alone. 

It would weary you if I should rehearse all the 
ways in which Christian Endeavor societies have 
proved helpful to the Sunday-school. Many a pri- 
mary department has gained much from close associa- 
tion with the work of the superintendent of the Junior 
Christian Endeavor society. I have heard of a large 
number of places where the Endeavorers organized 
and maintained mission Sunday-schools— schools that 
in many instances have grown to churches. Often 
the Endeavorers take charge of the ushering of the 
school, furnish flowers for every session, offer rewards 
to the scholars for excellence in various directions, 
help with swift feet in the messenger service of the 
home department, turn their trained forces into an 
occasional Sunday-school prayer-meeting, — indeed, 
they are as ingenious in discovering ways of helping 
this elder sister of the Christian Endeavor society as 
they are zealous and persistent in these labors after 
they are inaugurated. 

238 



S. S. and C. E. 

If in some churches this help is not given, it is 
probably because it is not invited, or very likely 
through lack of organization. If the Christian En- 
deavor society has no Sunday-school committee, let 
the Sunday-school superintendent, who is a member 
of the society ex officio, interest himself in obtaining 
one. And then through this committee he can draft 
into the service all the other usual committees of the 
society— the lookout committee, to get new scholars ; 
the prayer-meeting committee, to aid in the school's 
devotional exercises ; the temperance and missionary 
committees, to give assistance in the special lessons on 
those themes ; the music committee, to aid in the 
singing, and the flower committee, to help in the 
decorations ; the social committee, to seek the absent 
and the sick ; the good-literature committee, to help 
the librarian. 

And if the Endeavorers do this, or a part of this, 
for the Sunday-school, why should not the Sunday- 
school do a little for the Christian Endeavor society? 
The superintendent may help it by calling upon it for 
assistance and by recognizing on fit occasions its 
officers and committees. He may even give it an 
occasional advertisement from the desk ; and he, with 
his officers and teachers, may do much to put himself 
in touch with the young people by attending the 
Christian Endeavor meetings now and then. The 
teachers may help by introducing into their talks be- 
fore the classes an occasional hint on the Christian 
Endeavor pledge or committee work, or by remem- 
239 



Sunday-School Success 

bering the prayer-meeting topic and suggesting a 
thought or two that may be developed in the meet- 
ing, or by urging membership in the society upon 
those that do not already belong to it. 

Thus it is seen how intimately these two organiza- 
tions are related, and how much each may do to help 
the other. Do not allow them to labor apart. Par- 
allel threads are weak; cables are made by twisting 
them together. 



240 



Chapter XL 
Teachers in 8vo 

What the Sunday-school library should be depends 
on what the community is. These libraries, therefore, 
should not pattern after one another like peas in a 
pod, as is too often the case, but each should have an 
individuality of its own. The Sunday-school in a 
city, with an overflowing public library and an excel- 
lent public-school library at hand, has no excuse for 
distributing secular books ; while such books may 
form a useful addition to the library of a country 
school. 

Of course there is danger in admitting secular 
books to the Sunday-school library under any cir- 
cumstances, and I would not for the world add one 
more to the many subtle inroads upon the Lord's 
day. If you place in your library any books that are 
not suitable Sunday reading, cover them with paper 
of a distinctive color, mark them " For week-day 
reading only," and watch them carefully, that you 
may withdraw them from circulation if you find them 
241 



Sunday-School Success 

trenching on the sacred hours. With proper restric- 
tions, however, the church may find here a blessed 
ministry to many book-hungry communities. Biog- 
raphies like Irving's " Washington " or Holland's 
" Lincoln " ; histories like Motley's " Rise of the 
Dutch Republic " ; poems like " Snowbound," " The 
Idyls of the King," " Evangeline" ; essays like Smiles' 
"Self Help" or Mathews' "Getting on in the 
World " ; books of science like Winchell's " Sparks 
from a Geologist's Hammer" or Proctor's "Other 
Worlds than Ours,"— if you can get your scholars to 
read on week-days such books as these, you will 
deepen, broaden, and enrich the soil in which you do 
your Sunday sowing. 

But the more the community needs books, the 
harder it is to raise money for them. This, however, 
is merely a difficulty of the start. A few books, 
shrewdly chosen, will create a hunger for more, and 
that hunger will open the pocketbooks. 

Hold a book social, admission to which shall be 
a copy, old or new, of some good book. The enter- 
tainment at this social should be appropriate. Let 
each person that comes carry about him a token of 
some book, such as a card about his neck reading, 
" Who teaches you? " (" Hoosier School Master " ! ). 
Illustrate a poem with shadow pictures. Place about 
the room numbered portraits of authors for the com- 
pany to name. Add readings and essays on literary 
themes. 

A course of lectures and concerts is possible, now- 
242 



Teachers in 8vo 

adays, for almost any enterprising community, and 
the proceeds will give the library a start. 

For a time you may charge two cents for the read- 
ing of each book, thus forcing the library itself to earn 
its double in the course of a year. 

At the beginning,— or, for that matter, all the 
time, — the generous among the church-members may 
be urged to lend books to the library for a year at a 
time. Such books should be covered with different 
paper from the others, and plainly marked with the 
name of the lender and an injunction to especial care- 
fulness in handling them. 

The library will be generously supported, if its 
books are sensibly selected ; but this is not an easy 
task. Do not leave it to any single man, but appoint 
the wisest men and women of the church a committee 
on selection, and require them all to read every book 
that is chosen. Obviously, the value of such a com- 
mittee will increase with the growing years, and it 
should be a permanent body. 

Many booksellers will send books on approval. 
The review columns in the religious papers should be 
regularly watched. The committee should be placed 
on the mailing-lists of all the best publishers, to receive 
their regular announcements of books. They should 
get into correspondence with the librarians of other 
schools, learning from them what books are popular 
and helpful. And, above everything else, they should 
get in contact with the scholars of their own school, 
to watch the practical effect of the books they select. 
243 



Sunday-School Success 

Regarding the selection of books, first, some 
"dont's." 

Don't choose any volume, no matter how famous, 
without reading every word of it. One of the grand- 
est of biographies, for instance, is Franklin's autobi- 
ography ; but you will not wish to put before young 
readers his chapter on his religion — or lack of it. Won- 
derfully inspiring essays are Emerson's ; but here and 
there a sentence speaks of Christ as a mere man. A 
very stimulating booklet is " Blessed be Drudgery " ; 
but one sentence spoils it for our use, since it places 
Jesus at the end of a list of philosophers at whose 
head stands Herbert Spencer. 

Don't buy "fads." Wait and see whether the 
book now so much lauded is heard of next year. 

Don't buy the books that have fittingly been called 
" a-little-child-shall-lead-them " stories. Bill Nye de- 
scribed them as tales relating how a dear little boy, 
though but five and a half and crippled, took in back 
stairs to scrub, and supported his widowed mother, 
and sent his sister to college. 

Don't buy " libraries." As sensibly let a man that 
has never seen you order for you a suit of clothes. 

Don't buy "sets" and "series" and "sequels." 
Judge every book on its merits. 

Don't buy the books of one publishing-house alone, 
however excellent, any more than you would fill your 
home with the works of only one painter. 

Don't confine your choice merely to the " Sunday- 
school writers." Books that are not virile enough to 
244 



Teachers in 8vo 

attract and help folks outside the Sunday-school are 
not likely to prove very useful inside. 

Don't buy by authors. "Aunt Mary's Candle- 
stick," by Jemima Jones, may have been the greatest 
success of the year in your school ; but that is no rea- 
son why you should load up with "Aunt Mary's 
Dust-brush" and "Aunt Mary's Needlecase " and 
"Aunt Mary's Dish-mop," by the same industrious 
author. 

In fine, don't buy any book, no matter who is its 
publisher or author, or what its reputation, unless that 
particular book meets some particular need of your 
particular school. 

And now, what shall we buy? Stories, of course, 
in delightful measure. The Sunday-school library 
has the highest authority for teaching in parables. 
And for these stories there are three requirements. 

First, they must be attractive. What is the use of 
a book if it will not be read? 

Second, they must be natural. He who is the 
Truth will never bless a story of lifeless, jerking, gal- 
vanized puppets, gibbering forced aphorisms and pre- 
posterous piety, and acting in a red fire of sensational 
incidents. Real boys and girls, real men and women, 
real life, and therefore life intensely interesting, — 
these must dwell in our Sunday-school stories. 

And finally, the stories must be helpful. Each 
must have a point, a purpose. They must be out- 
right for Christ, if they are to make outright Chris- 
tians. 

245 



Sunday-School Success 

Don't neglect the old-fashioned stories, such as 
the Rollo books. They are full of meat. Especially- 
helpful are such stories of Bible times as " Ben Hur." 
Provided their imaginings do not outrun the Bible 
facts, we can scarcely have too many of them. Do 
not forget, either, the books that tell the Bible stories 
themselves, in simple language, for the little ones. 
Above all stories, do not omit the " Pilgrim's Progress," 
but buy a volume in large type and beautifully illustrated. 

Next to stories, what? Emphatically, lives of the 
great Christians ; above all, missionaries. There are 
brief, bright, well-illustrated lives of Mackay, the 
marvelous mechanic, Carey, the consecrated cobbler, 
Paton, the hero of the New Hebrides, Livingstone 
the daring, Martyn the saintly, Judson the sagacious, 
Patteson, the white knight of Melanesia, and a host 
of other grand men. What inspiration to a splendid 
life is to be gained from the story of Madagascar's 
dusky martyrs, or the account of Allen Gardiner's 
magnificent death in Patagonia! What a spur to 
active service is the tale of the winning of Hawaii, 
the opening up of Japan, the self-sacrificing missions 
of the Moravians, the daring ride of Whitman across 
the continent for the salvation of Oregon! 

Then, there are the lives of great reformers like 
Luther, John Howard, Wilberforce, John B. Gough, 
and of such superb Christians as Gladstone, Wesley, 
Washington, William of Orange. There is no need 
of a long list. The trouble is not to find the books, 
but to awaken among your scholars a hunger for the 
246 



Teachers in 8vo 

real heroism of real men as opposed to the imaginary 
heroism of fiction. 

Another section of your library should contain 
books that bear directly on the work of the school. 
There must be the best works on teaching, such as 
Trumbull's " Teachers and Teaching," SchaufBer's 
" Ways of Working," Boynton's " The Model Sunday- 
school," and Du Bois' "The Point of Contact." 
There must be some account of the Bible, like Rice's 
" Our Sixty-six Sacred Books " ; some brief and at- 
tractive manual of Christian evidences, like Fisher's 
or Robinson's ; some life of Christ, like Geikie's or 
Farrar's; some account of the history, polity, and 
teachings of your denomination. Thompson's " The 
Land and the Book," Smith's " Historical Geography 
of the Holy Land," Geikie's " Hours with the Bible," 
Taylor's " Moses, the Lawgiver," Deems' " The Gos- 
pel of Common Sense," Pierce's "Pictured Truth," 
Butterworth's "The Story of the Hymns," — each of 
these is a type of a class of books helpful to teachers, 
— and to scholars also, if they can be brought to read 
them. Add, for the temperance lessons, such books 
as Banks' " The Saloon-keeper's Ledger," Gustaf- 
son's " The Fountain of Death," and Strong's " Our 
Country" and "The New Era." 

I wonder that so few Sunday-school libraries con- 
tain the great Christian poems, such as " Paradise 
Lost," Browning's "Saul," Lowell's "Vision of Sir 
Launfal," Arnold's " The Light of the World," and 
many more that would illuminate the lessons. 
247 



Sunday-School Success 

Many fascinating books of science for young folks 
have been written expressly from the Christian stand- 
point. Why not add to the library such books as 
Kingsley's " Glaucus," Burr's " Ecce Ccelum," Agnes 
Gibberne's "Sun, Moon, and Stars," Keyser's "In 
Bird-land"? 

I may seem to be suggesting books for the older 
scholars mainly. Let me here urge that equal care 
and thought be spent on the volumes for the little 
tots and the " intermediates." Their books are not 
so interesting to the mature-minded committee, and 
so they are more likely to be chosen at haphazard. 

This is especially true of the books for the primary 
department. Two or three pounds of their diminu- 
tive volumes are shoveled up in a mass, read by title, 
and tucked in at the end of the list. This careless- 
ness is especially injurious, because it is at their age 
that the reading habit is formed, and it is of the ut- 
most importance that the tiniest books in the library 
shall be bright, helpful, and of real literary value. 
To discover these will prove one of the most difficult 
tasks of the conscientious committee. 

Do not give up the old favorites. When Susan 
Coolidge's "Katy Did" series wears out, give the 
old books away to some poorer school and get a fresh 
set of the same. Remember that new scholars are 
all the time entering, and that there is no recommen- 
dation for a book so effective as the young people's 
own testimony, " I have read it, and I know you will 
like it." 

248 



Teachers in 8vo 

Have an eye to the paper and type and binding. 
Many books intended for Sunday-school libraries are 
printed on stiff, pulpy paper, that refuses to remain 
open at any place without cracking the back, and use 
a cramped and formal typography more suitable to a 
funeral sermon than to a book intended to attract 
young folks. 

If your funds allow, it is an admirable plan to 
obtain more than one copy of certain books especially 
likely to be needed by several classes at once, such 
as books on Christian evidences, on the Bible, and on 
the themes of the current lessons. 

It is one thing to gather a library, and quite an- 
other to get it used, and well used. The first point 
is to introduce it to the teachers. They must con- 
sider these " teachers in 8vo " to be their assistants, 
and must be thoroughly acquainted with them. 
Every teacher should read every book in the library 
that is within the range of his scholars' comprehension. 
How otherwise can he guide their reading? Of 
course the most hasty perusal will be sufficient, pro- 
vided it shows the teacher the heart of the book. A 
teacher should learn the useful art of rapid reading. 

Let the teacher, as part of his preview of the quar- 
ter's lessons, make out a list of library books that teach 
the principal truths of the quarter ahead of him, and 
give this list to each scholar with the first lesson. A 
few minutes of each teachers' meeting might well be 
spent in giving suggestions regarding the use of the 
library to illustrate the next lesson. Let the teacher 
249 



Sunday-School Success 

often refer to these books in the course of his teach- 
ing, learn what appropriate books each scholar has 
been reading, and get him to give the class some ac- 
count of them. 

Often it will be well for the teacher to ask some 
scholar to read a certain story or biography or poem 
during the week, and be ready to tell about it for an 
illustration of next Sunday's truths. 

If you have no teachers' meeting, once in a while 
the librarian may mention at the prayer-meeting some 
library book of timely helpfulness, or the pastor 
might even speak of it from the pulpit. 

It is far better to buy the books a few at a time. 
In some schools a new book is added to the library 
every Sunday of the fifty-two. The chairman of the 
library committee comes forward with the book in his 
hand, and describes it in a few bright, brisk sentences. 
Its title and number are plainly written on the black- 
board in front of the school. The choice is varied, 
— now a book for the youngest, next week one for 
the older scholars. 

Some libraries have a special case for the new 
books, where every one can readily find them and 
examine them. Indeed, the scholars are far more 
easily introduced to all the books, new and old, if 
they have free access to the shelves and can handle 
the books themselves, thus coming to know each as 
an old friend. By the way, I do not believe in cov- 
ering the books. Covered books have no individu- 
ality. 

250 



Teachers in 8vo 

Happy the school that has a good-sized room for 
its library. Some even get it by placing the books in 
a house next door to the church. 

I have known schools to get acquainted with their 
books by coming together for a " library evening," in 
which the wealth of the library was disclosed by vari- 
ous speakers, each trying to interest the school in one 
book, or class of books. 

After all, the library catalogue may be the best 
agent of introduction. Every library should have 
one, though it is only a home-made affair, manufac- 
tured on a typewriter or a hectograph. Every book 
should be briefly described, so that the scholars may 
know, for instance, the scene and purpose of each 
story, the kind of man described in each biography, 
and whether it is a book for old, young, or primary 
scholars. Some librarians mark one catalogue for 
each class, indicating the books especially pleasing to 
scholars of the average age of the class, so that the 
teacher may guide their selection. Others divide the 
catalogue into sections, each containing the books 
appropriate to one division of the school. 

Not only should a teacher know what his scholars 
are reading, but he should find out how they read. 
He should try to teach them the art of reading. The 
demoralizing habit of reading merely for the moment's 
pleasurable excitement and the next moment's forget- 
ting may be formed as easily with Sunday-school 
stories as with newspapers. 

Some librarians, to this end, place in each book a 
251 



Sunday-School Success 

slip of paper, and the scholar is expected to write upon 
this at least one thing he has learned from the book, 
telling at the same time how he likes it. 

If the scholars, as will likely happen, are reading 
little but stories, the librarian himself can do much to 
promote more solid reading by reporting every month 
to the school the number of stories read, the number 
of biographies, etc. This report may be made by 
classes, and teachers and scholars should be urged to 
make a better record next month. 

Let me close this chapter with a few points regard- 
ing library management. 

It is poor economy of labor to change the librarian 
frequently, so much of his usefulness depends on his 
familiarity with the books, and that familiarity re- 
quires time to gain. If you can find a librarian that 
does not especially need the benefit of the Bible 
study, one that loves and understands children, keep 
him in office as long as may be. But be sure to give 
him an assistant to aid the children in their selections, 
or record the books while the librarian is consulting 
with the children ; also to take the librarian's place 
when he is sick or absent, or possibly to take turns 
with him in presiding over the library, so that each 
may recite the lesson half the time. 

The books will be gathered up on the entrance of 
the scholars. A table or a basket or an usher may 
be placed at the door for this purpose. If the schol- 
ars cannot be given access to the books and select 
them themselves, the librarians will pass quietly around 
252 



Teachers in 8vo 

among the classes, leaving the new books at each 
table; but these books are never to be given to the 
scholars until just before they leave. 

The most effective record, yet a very simple one, 
may be made by any librarian. Give to each scholar 
a card bearing his name and his number. On this 
he writes a list of about ten numbers of the books he 
prefers. As the librarian places his card in one of 
these new books, that number is scratched off and 
the date written opposite. At the same time the li- 
brarian writes the scholar's number and the date in 
his library catalogue after the number of the book 
taken out, and upon a list of the scholars' numbers 
writes the number of the book after the number of 
the scholar. When the book is returned lines are 
drawn through these records. Thus at any time the 
librarian can see what books are out, who has them, 
how long they have had them, what books each 
scholar has read, and how often each book has been 
taken out. 

As the Sunday-school library should teach punctu- 
ality, among other good things, the librarian should 
strictly require every book to be brought back at the 
end of the week or fortnight, no matter who the 
scholar may be, or whether the book is in much or little 
demand. It may not be best to establish any system 
of fines, but a postal-card notice should be sent in 
aggravated cases, and sometimes the teacher should 
be asked to look up the book. It will spur the 
scholars to promptness if they know that each instance 
253 



Sunday-School Success 

of tardiness is recorded against their names on the 
library's records. 

The proper care of books is another good thing the 
library should teach. Any marked blemish in a book 
should be noted when it is sent out ; and when a book 
is injured by a scholar, the librarian should always 
speak to him about it, or get the teacher to do this if 
the child is a stranger to him. A plainly printed slip 
urging careful handling, forbidding dog's ears, and 
the like, may well be pasted in each book. 

It is sometimes possible and advantageous to open 
the library at some time during the week, especially 
on prayer-meeting evenings, when the older folks can 
select their books, or, for the benefit of the children, 
on Friday afternoons after school. 

Some classes will like to have little libraries of their 
own, containing Bibles for each scholar, Bible atlas, 
a Revised Bible, a Bible dictionary, a concordance, 
etc. Always it is well to arrange for the entire school 
a special reference library, the contents of which will 
largely change from quarter to quarter. In it will be 
placed the general Bible helps and whatever books 
are of special interest for the quarter's lessons. The 
scholars may be sent to these reference shelves during 
the lesson hour. At least one school has a special 
case, always open, for books of this nature, and places 
the case in the front of its main schoolroom. 

On the whole, it will be seen that this chapter is a 
plea for a Sunday-school library that is a corporate 
part of the Sunday-school teaching, that will help the 
254 



Teachers in 8vo 

teacher on Sunday, and carry his teaching through the 
week. Such a library virtually adds scores of the 
wisest men and women to the teaching force of the 
school, and multiplies by many hours the pitiful thirty 
minutes given to the lesson. 



255 



Chapter XLI 
Around the Council Fire 

Our conventions are the grand council fires in the 
war the Sunday-school is waging against the forces of 
evil. The flame of the Holy Spirit should blaze in 
their midst. With military directness they should go 
straight to the immediate needs, find out what they 
are, plan the campaign. Orderly and in turn, all 
should have a part in them, not only the speakers, 
but the audience, one school and every school. With 
hearts uplifted, with zeal on fire, every teacher should 
leave the gathering bent on more valiant service. 

Only a well-planned convention can effect this, — 
a convention long thought over and prayed over, not 
merely by one man, but by many. These meetings 
not seldom remind one of a house of which the owner 
takes possession prematurely. Over yonder the 
scaffolding is still up, here they are just removing it, 
the sound of the hammer and the saw is everywhere, 
and the smell of wet plaster is in the air. Thus in 
many conventions. Here and there the president 
256 



Around the Council Fire 

bustles around, over the platform, through the audi- 
ence. The local committee of arrangements are like 
bees before swarming. We begin late and with 
apologies ; so we continue. 

The model convention, however, began at least as 
far back as the preceding convention. At that gath- 
ering suggestions for the next meeting were called for 
and obtained. During the following weeks the presi- 
dent visited or corresponded with every school in the 
district, trying to discover its excellences and lacks, 
that the convention might exhibit the one and supply 
the other. Indeed, at the very opening of the pre- 
ceding convention the new officers, if any, were 
elected, that during the sessions they might have ears 
open and brains and tongues active, gathering hints 
for the profitable meeting they were to plan. There- 
fore it was early known precisely what the coming 
convention was to teach, and that convention, instead 
of bumping along Haphazard Lane, rolls smoothly 
over Purpose Avenue. 

Two methods will promote this preparedness of 
the audience, without which the best-prepared pro- 
gramme largely fails : there should be a convention 
press committee, whose pleasant task it is to pack the 
papers with appetizing details of the coming meetings ; 
and every school should be supplied, at least two 
weeks beforehand, with a large number of the printed 
programmes. If these are attractively got up, if the 
topics meet genuine needs and are expressed brightly, 
suggestively, and not as Dr. Dryasdust would formu- 
257 



Sunday-School Success 

late them, and if the various superintendents and 
pastors advertise the convention wisely, the audience 
that will come together will be ready for its work. 

So large a part of most Sunday-school convention 
audiences comes from the immediate locality that 
especial effort should be made to interest beforehand 
the church and the town in which the meetings are 
held ; and this not merely for the sake of the conven- 
tion, but for the quickening of Sunday-school inter- 
ests throughout the community. But if only a few 
persons are gathered, do not make the mistake of 
losing them in a large room, with scores of empty 
pews into which their zeal can creep away and hide 
itself. The same coals that grow black in all out- 
doors will make a little stove red-hot. 

No small part of the preparation that is to make a 
success of your convention is the careful and enter- 
prising selection of speakers. The best policy is to 
choose none from " policy." Select the men that can 
inspire and instruct, though you must crowd out some 
pastor of a big church or some man with a big name. 
From the teachers themselves call out suggestions as 
to speakers as well as to topics. Search through your 
district for original workers, inventors, plummet men, 
women that win the hearts of the children, and get 
them to tell the convention how they do it. By all 
means call in the successful Christian teacher in the 
secular schools. If possible, import a skilled worker 
from outside your district. Fresh air will come in 
with him, the sense of a wider outlook. Only, he 
258 



Around the Council Fire 

must not be an opinionated egotist, one of those ex- 
cathedra men, but a warm-hearted brother in the 
Lord ; and it is far better to use him in several short 
speeches scattered over the programme than in one 
long address. 

The wise choice of topics is quite as important as 
a wise choice of men to treat them. Let all pro- 
gramme-makers remember what the convention is to 
do : not to show off leaders, or to raise money, or to 
get acquainted, or to have a good time, but to learn 
more about teaching and managing Sunday-schools. 
Three aims must be set before every Sunday-school 
convention : to arouse new love for the Bible, to 
arouse new love for souls, to arouse new zeal for 
bringing these two together. Every convention, 
then, should divide its time among three classes of 
topics : the Bible, the children, the teaching. 

i . The Bible. Such themes as these are suggested : 
" How the Bible differs from all other books." 
" Recent Bible discoveries." " My way of studying 
the Bible." " Bible-marking." "How to study 
Exodus." " The use of a ' teacher's Bible.' " " In- 
terleaved Bibles, — why and how." "The value of 
the Victoria revision." "The study of the Bible as 
literature." "What is the best commentary?" 
" Reading the Bible in course, — how to make it most 
profitable." "The Septuagint and its importance." 
" How the Bible came down to the printing-press." 
"The story of our English Bible." 

2. TJie Children. "Imagination in children." 
259 



Sunday-School Success 

"Reasoning processes that a child will not appreciate." 
" Why children love stories." " Important differences 
between the child's mind and ours." " Put yourself 
in his place." " A child's confidence : how lost ; how 
won." "Prigs: how not to make them." "The 
self-conscious child and how to treat him." "Les- 
sons from the playground." " Kindergarten princi- 
ples of value in the Sunday-school." 

3. The Two Brought Together. " What is a good 
question? " " How to get the class to ask questions." 
" A class that keeps its own order." " Getting young 
people in love with the Bible." "The teacher's 
voice." " Their own Bibles." " The quarterly left 
at home." " How to make the Bible real to the chil- 
dren." " Some tests our teaching should stand." 

This outline does not omit the school management, 
and occasional discussion of the work of superinten- 
dents and other officers will belong under the last head ; 
but the teachers are so many compared with the offi- 
cers that their work should be treated the more gen- 
erously. I think most convention programmes deal 
far too much with the machinery of the work, any way. 

The best mode of helping the officers is by an offi- 
cers' conference ; and if the convention holds but two 
sessions, I would urge that one of them be broken up 
into conferences. In one room the primary workers 
may meet ; in another, the superintendents and their 
assistants ; in others, the librarians, the secretaries, the 
choristers, the teachers of intermediate classes, the 
teachers of adult classes, the heads of home depart- 
260 



Around the Council Fire 

ments, the pastors. Programmes for these confer- 
ences should be arranged with as much care as for 
the main convention, and nothing should be done at 
random. It is a good plan, at the opening of these 
little simultaneous gatherings, to appoint one mem- 
ber of each to take notes of the best things and report 
them succinctly to the entire body when it reassembles. 

There are three classes of topics that I especially 
delight to see on a convention programme. First, 
the fundamentals. We must not forget the host of 
new workers constantly coming into our ranks. 
" How to ask a question " is an old, old theme ; but 
there are enough new teachers to keep it forever fresh 
and pertinent. Second, new methods, exploited by 
authorities, by practical workers. Third, what I call 
"encouragements," topics that inspire, cheer, comfort, 
victories gained, rewards in sight. Hallelujah themes. 

To these I must add a fourth : work for the audi- 
ence. I would give the listeners a chance to "talk 
back " about once every hour, and something to do, 
besides listening, every half-hour. Question-boxes 
on practical topics are incomparable interest-quick- 
eners. An answer-box is a reversed question-box. 
It contains written answers by the teachers, two or 
three questions of wide scope and great importance 
being propounded on the programme ; such questions 
as: "What do you do with pert children? " " How 
do you get your scholars to study their lessons?" 
A wise leader, with the grace of conciseness, is re- 
quired for both these exercises. 
261 



Sunday-School Success 

Yes, and he is needed for the " open parliaments," 
or conversational discussions of helpful topics by brisk 
dialogue between audience and platform. These may 
be made merely parade-grounds for " smart " leaders, 
or genuine experience meetings, true council fires. 
It is wise to send a special invitation to your best 
teachers, asking them to be prepared with suggestions 
or questions for the open parliament, that it may start 
off with momentum already obtained. A summarist, 
too, is a good appointment ; he listens quietly to the 
open parliament, and at the close gathers up, in a few 
sentences that stick, whatever is best worth preserv- 
ing out of the discussion. 

The open parliament most commonly held consists 
merely of dry and formal reports from each school, 
the roll being called. If such an exercise is held, 
place in charge of it a man thoroughly familiar with 
the schools, and able by brisk questioning to elicit a 
report that will picture the one school and stimulate 
the others. 

A good presiding officer is half a convention. His 
first duty is to have a distinct understanding with 
each speaker that he is not to trespass on the next 
man's time, and his second duty is to cry " Stop, 
thief ! " if the speakers do so trespass. The convention 
management should be a model for the Sunday- 
schools in every way, and in none more imperatively 
than in this of promptness. 

But also as to order. Oh, the weak-kneed or the 
purblind presidents, that allow the talking, whisper- 
262 



Around the Council Fire 

ing, walking about of a few to filch from the many 
half the value of the meetings! Stop the speaker. 
Call a halt on the entire convention. Don't proceed 
another step till quiet is restored, and maintained. 
Be a platform czar, and your audience will be your 
happy serfs. 

Then, the president is master of ceremonies. So 
much in acquaintanceships depends on tactful intro- 
ductions! He should deliver to each successive 
speaker an audience that is in a glow of anticipation, 
and when the speaker is done,— yes, and all through, 
— his own cordial hands shou'd lead the hearty ap- 
plause, and he should take time for an appreciative 
word before passing to the next topic. 

If the presiding officer is to do all this, he must 
plan beforehand almost every sentence he will use in 
introducing speakers or opening the discussions. He 
is to be suggestive ; he is to set brains a-throbbing 
with eagerness and tongues aching with things to say ; 
and he is to do it all in twenty words. Brevity, good 
humor, suggestiveness,— these, in this order, are the 
chairman's prime virtues. 

At the opening of every convention the key-note 
of formality, routine, and perfunctoriness is struck in 
the address of welcome and the response. Their 
every word could safely be predicted in advance. 
The world is waiting for a programme committee 
that will be courageous enough to leave them out. 
If the pastor of the entertaining church has helpful 
ideas on Sunday-school work, by all means place him 
263 



Sunday-School Success 

on the programme somewhere ; but don't make a rut 
of him. 

At the very outset strike the key of prayer. Insert 
here and there throughout the programme a quiet ten 
minutes with the great Teacher. By all means close 
with a devotional half -hour— not a hasty prayer 
punctuated with the snapping of watches. Sentence 
prayers by scores, prayer psalms softly repeated, 
prayer hymns read with bowed heads, — the conven- 
tion should furnish an inspiration and model for the 
devotions of all the schools represented. 

Scarcely less important is the element of song. 
Unconsciously to themselves, the audience should 
become a normal training-class, learning how to con- 
duct the singing of their schools in fresh and uplifting 
ways. Many, if not all of the methods mentioned in 
my chapter on this theme find fit application to the 
convention. 

The social features deserve careful attention. Set 
the teachers to talking together; conversation was 
Socrates' university. One of the most helpful events 
may be a light supper given by the entertaining 
church. A small fee is charged, all sit down together, 
and at the close a series of happy speeches will bring 
out flashes of wit and bushels of sense. 

The business should be kept under. Introduce it 
a little at a time, rather than spend a fatiguing hour 
and a half. Make no parade of money-raising. 
Giving should be done quietly. Teach your teachers 
the grace of envelopes. Reduce all business to a 
264 



Around the Council Fire 

minimum, remembering that the convention comes 
together not for legislation, but for inspiration. 

The Sunday-school convention is not only a con- 
ference, but an exposition. Here should be gathered 
whatever new teaching apparatus any school has 
bought: wall-maps, sand-maps, relief-maps, material 
for object-lessons, portable blackboards, colored pic- 
tures illustrating the lessons, specimens of class tests, 
library catalogues, new kinds of class-books, collec- 
tion-envelopes, singing-books, new editions of the 
Bible, lesson helps of all kinds,— it is clear how 
varied and valuable a collection may easily be 
brought together when once the teachers and officers 
understand what is wanted. 

The library of the entertaining school should be 
open for visiting librarians to examine books and 
methods. The best new books might be brought in 
from all the libraries of the district, and if each school 
sent only one or two, the entire exhibit would furnish 
many a suggestion to wide-awake library committees. 

One of the most important exhibits is a Sunday- 
school map of the district, indicating where schools 
are in existence, and also where schools might and 
should be placed. 

There is one kind of exhibit that should rarely be 
made, if ever : an exhibit of the children themselves, 
either to " speak pieces " or to play Sunday-school 
and be taught. The latter use of them has advan- 
tages, but, to my mind, the gain to the audience is 
nothing compared to the children's increase of self- 
265 



Sunday-School Success 

consciousness. I hide my head whenever I think of 
such a mock recitation in which I figured when a 
little boy, and remember how proud I was of my pert 
forwardness in answering all of the questions ; before 
all those people, too! 

In closing, let us ask how the convention results 
may be gathered up, preserved, and sown broadcast. 
A notebook should be in the hand of each attendant, 
— either given away or sold. The speakers should 
so mark their points and emphasize the subdivisions 
of their addresses that the thoughts can readily be 
grasped and retained. A printed syllabus is a great 
assistance to this end, and if the printing-press is too 
costly, a manifolder may be used. Blank pages 
should be left in the programme, to invite to note- 
taking. 

And then, the new plans all jotted down, the felici- 
tous expressions written out verbatim, the facts and 
figures clearly noted, let the convention be widely re- 
ported. Not merely should the convention press 
committee, that heralded the gathering through the 
papers, continue their labors long enough to render 
their previous work most fruitful, but every teacher 
present should carry the convention's best to his 
teachers' meeting and his class ; yes, and to the church 
prayer-meeting. Thus will the ardor of the council 
fire spread throughout the army. 



266 



Chapter XLII 
The Incorporation of Ideas 

Certain arts, such as sculpture, painting, and 
architecture, have been named the fine arts by some 
man who had not learned to look inward, and see 
what an infinitely finer art is any that attempts to 
fashion the human soul. The pastor's and the 
teacher's arts, which are in essence one, though the 
tyranny of language forbids calling them the fine 
arts, may be given even a nobler title ; they are the 
high arts. 

We would sit down with bated breath and tense- 
drawn nerves to take to pieces for the first time the 
delicate machinery of a watch for cleaning and re- 
adjustment. If a sovereign diamond were placed in 
our hands for faceting, we would study for days its 
cleavage plane, its natural angles, and its matrix, and 
press it to the revolving wheel at last with timidity 
and shrinking. But when the most marvelously deli- 
cate, impressionable, yet abiding thing in the world 
is placed in our hands, together with the mightiest 
267 



Sunday-School Success 

yet finest tools, and under conditions constantly 
varying, and we are told to fashion a human soul into 
truth and nobility, we sit down with confident smiles, 
and whack away. 

It is impossible for a Sunday-school teacher to 
magnify his office. He needs a spiritual telescope, 
rather, to see above it and below it and on all sides 
of it. We Sunday-school teachers constitute an un- 
ordained ministry, whose functions are as sacred as 
those of the pulpit, though less inclusive. If we are 
faithful, conversions will be as frequent results of our 
lesson questions as of the pastor's sermons. " God 
hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly 
prophets, thirdly teachers." Let us desire earnestly 
the greater gifts; but if God calls us to be neither 
missionary nor pastor, but Sunday-school teacher, even 
that calling is too high for us fully to attain. 

It is an anomaly to which the Christian world is 
just awaking that workers permit themselves to enter 
on this sacred art with no apprenticeship. Indeed, 
if such untrained workers were not admitted, there 
would soon be no Sunday-schools in the world to 
admit them. Long as the seminaries for ministerial 
preparation have existed, it is only recently that 
training-schools for lay workers have been formed. 
May they grow and multiply! 

But until enlarged Christian activity places one of 
these blessed institutions within reach of each conse- 
crated layman, we must do the best we can with other 
means of growth. We must organize regular Sunday- 
268 



The Incorporation of Ideas 

school conventions and teach one another there. We 
must build one another up in enthusiastic teachers' 
meetings. We must use the best lesson helps. We 
must read greedily every book and every article that 
promises to give us new ideas and methods and in- 
spiration. 

Now some object to all this. " You are needlessly 
discouraging us," they say. "You are making a 
very simple matter appear complicated ; an easy one 
seem difficult. Christ's yoke is easy ; Christ's gospel 
is plain ; he will give us in that Sunday-school hour 
what we are to say. Your minute directions as to 
methods of study, as to concordance and commentary 
and maps, are flying in the face of Providence. The 
Spirit bloweth where he listeth." 

The answer to all this is simple, and consists mainly 
in an appeal to experience. Simple and plain as 
Christ's message is, human lives are very complicated, 
and it is no simple matter or easy task to lay the 
Saviour's simple healing alongside their varied ills. 
Christ's burden is light ; if it were heavier it would 
be easier to get paradoxical humanity to accept it. 
Christ will instruct us what to say, provided we have 
so trained our heart and brain that his words will not 
fall as senseless babble from our tongues. The Spirit 
does breathe where he listeth, but the experience of 
these centuries ought to teach us that God is never 
present in power where work and prayer have not 
invited him. 

Haphazard work is not equal to thoughtful work. 
269 



Sunday-School Success 

Minute directions that would be wasted on a barn- 
painter are a necessity of the artist. Impromptu 
never yet won a race with Preparation. And I 
know that many a teacher is mourning over his empty 
hands who might be rejoicing over great sheaves if 
his sowing had been more liberal and his teaching 
more painstaking. 

And yet I sympathize with the weary discourage- 
ment of which all teachers feel a twinge when high 
ideals of teaching are held out before them. We are 
sure we are doing our best, already. It annoys us to 
be shown a better best. Our work is hard enough. 
It troubles us to be told that we must work harder 
before it can ever become easy. And especially, we 
are so confused by the multiplicity of good things we 
may do, of improvements we may make, that we do 
and make none of them. 

Now the secret of success in all arts lies in this: 
the Incorporation of Ideas. The reception of ideas, 
the appreciation and praise of them, this is nothing, 
though many are satisfied to stop here; but the in- 
corporation, the embodiment of them, this makes the 
artist. The artist is the man that is hungry for ideas, 
— for the ideal, that is; the man that, like Paul, 
proves them all by the tests of thought and experi- 
ence, and then holds fast whatever is good, until it 
has become part of himself, until it is incorporated. 

The artist is a man, too, that above all men knows 
the importance of trifles. The contour must be 
molded to nature precisely, the statue finished to the 
270 



The Incorporation of Ideas 

finger-nail, the machine accurate in every line and sur- 
face. He will not try to attain the ideal at a bound ; 
it is made up, he knows, of many ideas. He grasps 
one idea, and fixes that forever. Then, he has power 
for another. 

One point at a time, then, fellow-laborers in this 
blessed work ; one idea from an eager throng appeal- 
ing to you in books, lectures, or papers, proved and 
found good, and then held fast by prayerful practice, 
by never-yielding effort, until it is added to the com- 
pany of your unconscious forces. And then, in this 
power, to add another to it! Thus alone can we 
win, from Christ's university, the highest of all de- 
gress, Masters of his Art! 



271 



Chapter XLIII 
From a Superintendent's Notebook 

An egotist is foredoomed to failure in the Sunday- 
school. The worker that hopes for success must cast 
to the winds any foolish pride in originality, and seek 
far and wide for the wisest ideas and the freshest 
methods. A superintendent or a teacher without a 
notebook is only half a superintendent or teacher. 
Its pages should rapidly grow rich with plunder. 
The little white friend must be at hand when he 
attends conventions, when he reads, when he talks 
with other workers, when he thinks and prays over 
his sacred tasks. 

The two chapters that follow are merely specimen 
pages of such notebooks. While I have utilized them 
to gather up various plans and experiences that could 
not fittingly find place elsewhere in the book, their 
chief purpose is to illustrate the wide-awake catholicity 
that must animate every successful worker in Sunday- 
schools. 

It is right to say— though this is a matter of course 
27.2 



From a Superintendent's Notebook 

— that a large majority of these paragraphs are con- 
densed from that great storehouse of Sunday-school 
lore, the " Sunday-school Times." 



Their Own Review. — Scholars are likely to answer 
with special zest the questions prepared by other 
scholars. One school asks its classes in turn to fur- 
nish three questions on each lesson, which are pro- 
posed to the entire school at the close of the lesson 
hour. From these questions are selected a number 
for the quarterly review. They are "manifolded," 
and written answers are expected from all present. 

Out of Order. — An excellent review scheme was 
arranged by a superintendent who gave his school a 
list of twenty-six events in the life of Christ, all 
jumbled up, and asked them to come next Sunday 
prepared to arrange them in chronological order. 

A School Review. — ¥ ox reviewing the lesson before 
the entire school, select one class a week beforehand 
and give it ten or twelve comprehensive questions, 
from the quarterly or original. At the close of the 
lesson ask this class to rise and answer the questions 
as another class, also rising, asks them. Let all the 
classes take turns in this service. 

School Reviews. — ¥ or a change, it is well to incor- 
porate the entire school in a general review,— omit- 
ting, of course, the younger classes. One person 
may conduct the review, or the questions on each 
lesson may be asked by a different teacher. Different 
classes may be assigned special lessons to illustrate 
273 



Sunday-School Success 

by the concert repetition of Bible verses, or by a 
stanza of some song. One lesson of the quarter may 
be assigned to each class, and the questions that will 
be asked may be given to that class a week or two 
beforehand. In this case, general questions for the 
entire school should occasionally be interspersed. 

A Teachers' Supper. — Once a year, at least, bring 
together all the teachers and officers around a well- 
filled table. After-dinner speeches, cheery and merry, 
may follow, and then a pleasant evening's entertain- 
ment. 

The Annual Meeting. — Make this an event. A 
supper with bright speeches, the business meeting to 
follow ; a brisk literary and musical entertainment ; an 
introductory talk by some practical worker from 
abroad, — these are some of the ways of distinguishing 
the occasion. 

Badges. — Any Sunday-school festival will be given 
eclat by the use of badges. The children will be 
proud to wear them, and will treasure them as sou- 
venirs. They may be made almost without cost if 
you will use bright-colored cambric, and print upon 
them with a hand-stamp. 

A Sunday -School Day. — Yi not once a year, at least 
once every few years, it is well worth while to make 
the Sunday-school the theme of all the exercises on 
the Lord's day, — both morning and evening services, 
and the Christian Endeavor meeting. The subject has 
so many practical aspects that much good will be done 
in addition to the quickening of the Sunday-school. 
274 



From a Superintendent's Notebook 

The Home Department. — Simply a promise to study 
the lesson at home for half an hour each week — that 
is the scheme of the home department. You may 
add visitors, records, reports, ad libitum, but the home 
department may be complete and satisfactory with- 
out these. The plan is so simple that any school can 
use it, and so fruitful of blessed results that no school 
dare neglect it. A thorough canvass for members of 
the home department seldom fails to bring new 
members into the main school at once, and as the 
home study arouses interest, new scholars are con- 
tinually added from this source, besides the scores of 
aged and shut-ins whose lives are thus led into the 
green pastures of the Word. 

Home Department Day. — On this occasion a special 
effort is made to bring to the Sunday-school the en- 
tire home department. They sit together, and special 
services are held in their honor and for their benefit. 

Parents' Day. — Make a special effort once a year to 
bring out all the parents of the scholars. Issue special 
printed invitations. Have a printed programme. 
Let the exercises be the regular working of the 
school, with merely one short address to the parents 
in addition. 

A Parents' Social. — Parents and teacher should 
know one another, and there is no more gracious 
way to bring this about than by an evening spent 
together at the teacher's house. 

Purpose Cards. — To stimulate the school in needed 
ways, have a "purpose card" printed. It will read, 
275 



Sunday-School Success 

in tabular form, "I will endeavor to attend more 
faithfully, to prepare my lesson better, to get a new 
scholar," etc. Each member of the school signs 
his card, marks with crosses the " purposes " he 
makes his own, and returns the card to the superin- 
tendent. 

Installing the New Officers.— This should be done 
with some ceremony, including a very short address 
by the pastor, another by the outgoing superintendent 
or prominent officer, another by a representative of 
the incoming group, and an earnest prayer,— all to 
occupy no more than ten minutes. The scholars will 
have more respect for leaders thus honored, and the 
officers themselves will be more likely to magnify 
their office. 

The Old Superintendent.— Some schools elevate the 
assistant superintendent regularly to the superinten- 
dency. Other schools adopt the opposite course, and 
make the superintendent of one year the assistant 
superintendent of the next. Either plan secures con- 
tinuity of method. 

A True Assistant.— The assistant superintendent 
should be prepared to do, in the superintendent's 
absence, everything the superintendent ordinarily 
does. How can he be prepared to do this unless the 
superintendent regularly shares all kinds of work with 
his assistant? 

Help from the Public School.— -In most communities 
a very inspiring series of lectures might be obtained 
from Christian teachers in the secular schools and 
276 



From a Superintendent's Notebook 

colleges, the purpose of each lecture being to show 
how, according to the best pedagogical methods, a 
certain lesson might be taught, or Sunday-school 
teaching in general be carried on. 

Flowers at Home.— -You will delight your school, 
and teach them many lessons, if you give each scholar 
—or get the teachers to do this — a bulb, a package 
of seeds, or a small potted plant like a rose. Hold 
an exhibition to show the results, and then have the 
flowers given to the sick, the hospitals, the poor, or 
sold for missions. 

Easter Lilies. — A few cents invested in lily bulbs 
will make a beautiful Easter for your school. Give 
one to each scholar for him to raise, or, possibly, one 
to each class. The flowers, after Easter Sunday, are 
to be sent to the aged, the sick, and the poor. 

An Easter Gift. — Some Sunday-schools give each 
scholar, on Easter day, a little rosebush or a package 
of seeds, that they may be tended and urged to bloom 
by Children's Day, when they are all brought in. 

Vacation Transfers. — Some schools, when their 
scholars leave for a vacation, give them letters to 
schools where they will visit. These are printed forms, 
and include a detachable blank report, which, when 
filled out and returned, will show the scholar's atten- 
dance on the other school during his absence. 

Planned Prayer- Meetings.— It will greatly promote 

the devotional character of your school if you take 

twenty minutes each month for a prayer-meeting. 

Select four or five to offer prayer, and have them sit 

277 



Sunday-School Success 

on the platform. A brief, tender talk from the super- 
intendent and bright singing will complete a memor- 
able meeting. 

A Carryall — 1 have heard of Sunday-schools that 
maintained omnibuses or large carriages, to gather up 
and carry to the school children whose homes were so 
far away that they could not otherwise attend. 

Neighborhood Schools. — Distant groups of farmers' 
families, and others that cannot reach the school, 
should be organized in neighborhood Sunday-schools. 

A New Object Each Month. — The scholars' offer- 
ings should be an education not only in the instinct 
of giving, but also in the intelligent choice of objects 
for giving. Every Sunday-school should have a 
benevolence committee, which carefully selects for 
each month a new object of beneficence. On the 
last Sabbath of each month a word should be said 
about the object that appeals for the gifts of the next 
month. This brief account should, of course, be 
supplemented by the teachers in their classes. 

The Envelope System. — This plan of giving, which 
has done so much for our churches, should be used 
everywhere in the Sunday-school. Give each class 
a number and each scholar a set of dated envelopes, 
one for each Sunday, bearing his class number. Call 
for a contribution from each scholar each Sunday. 
Urge that all absent scholars send their contribu- 
tions, or bring them the next Sunday. From this 
systematic giving you may go on to proportionate giving 
by impressing on the scholars their duty to set apart 
278 



From a Superintendent's Notebook 

for God some regular proportion, say one tenth, of 
all the money they receive. If the school takes up 
monthly collections for special benevolent objects, 
the envelopes for these Sundays may be of a different 
color. If, as should always be the case, the expenses 
of the school are met by the church, leaving the entire 
school collections to be devoted to missions and 
charitable causes, the school committee on benevo- 
lences may select a different object of giving for each 
month. This object should then be written on each 
envelope for that month. 

A Jug-Breaking. — One of the best ways of teaching 
children the value of little gifts and the importance 
of weekly savings for Christ's cause is by the collec- 
tion of money in jugs. Set before them at the start 
some object for their gifts, that they may think and 
talk about it while they are saving; otherwise their 
minds are lifted no higher than their money. And 
how they will enjoy the jug-breaking! 

Class-Books. — Not records of class attendance, but 
books for the library, paid for by the various classes, 
selected by these so far as their choice seems wise, 
and each of them bearing an inscription telling what 
class presented it to the school. Such gifts give the 
scholars a personal interest in the library they have 
helped to create. 

Loan Libraries. — Instead of giving away the books 

your school has thoroughly read, loan them, in groups 

of fifty or so, to poorer schools. They will return 

them in good condition, and by that time there will 

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Sunday-School Success 

be many new scholars in your own school to whom 
the books will be fresh. 

Exchange Libraries. — There is no reason why neigh- 
boring schools, if their library funds are low, should 
not arrange to buy different books, and then exchange 
them after the original purchasers have used them 
for a year. All the schools in a town or township 
might well combine in an arrangement so economical. 

Receiving the New Books.— The library will be ad- 
vertised if the reception of new books is made an 
event They may be put in a public place, all at one 
time, and formally presented to the school by pastor 
or superintendent, with a word about each. This may 
be done at Christmas, Easter, Children's Day, Thanks- 
giving, at any one or all of these holiday seasons. 

Honor the Donors. — A special and attractive label 
for books presented to the library, with a space for the 
name of the person that makes the gift, will greatly 
increase the number of books received in this way. 

Their Own Paper. — A large Sunday-school may 
publish a little weekly or monthly paper, the adver- 
tisements paying the bills. The older scholars will 
be interested in doing the work. The notes about 
the various classes, the library, the contributions, the 
school work, will all prove stimulating. 

Sunday- School Calendars. — A good standing ad- 
vertisement of the school in any home would be a 
neat calendar of the year, bordered with facts about 
the school, invitations, pictures of church, pastor, 
Sunday-school officers, and the like. 
280 



From a Superintendent's Notebook 

A Bulletin Board.— A. conspicuous bulletin board, 
placed at the entrance, will save giving out many a 
notice. 

The Notices. — The wise superintendent will plan 
every word he is to say before the school, even — yea, 
especially ! — the giving of the notices. These notices 
will be the fewest possible ; don't let the Sunday-school 
be used as a bill-board. Announce only what you 
want the scholars to remember, and in such a bright 
way that they can't forget it. And don't discredit 
your perspicuity and their attention by announcing 
it more than once. 

Protect the Teacher. — One of the most important of 
the superintendent's duties is to protect the teacher 
from interruption during the recitation hour. A 
similar duty is to see that the time for the recitation 
suffers no diminution through the tardiness or pro- 
lixity of himself or any one else. 

Substitute Groups. — The work of "substituting" 
may well be divided up. Ask a set of older scholars 
to be ready to substitute on the first Sunday of each 
month, another set on the second Sunday, and so on. 

The Pastor as Substitute. — Certainly the pastor 
should not take a Sunday-school class of his own. 
That would be unfair to the rest of the school and 
the church. But he would get into helpful contact 
with a large number of people, young and old, if he 
should act every Sunday as a substitute teacher, now 
in this class and now in that. 

A Five- Minute Meeting.— A few minutes of con- 
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Sunday-School Success 

ference, immediately after the session of the school, 
will be a great help and stimulus to the teachers. 
One will ask help in a difficulty, another will report 
a method just proved successful. Everything will 
come fresh and vital from living experience. 

How Many Absent? — Often let the secretary, in 
his report to the school, state only the number absent 
from each class and department. He will thus 
change the emphasis, and arouse a new and profitable 
interest. 

A Roll- Call. — It takes time, but at long intervals a 
public roll-call of the entire school is worth while. 
Of course it should be well advertised beforehand, 
and the entire membership will wish to be present. 
Then make the hour so delightful that they will not 
think of staying away thereafter. 

Honor Rolls. — Hang a large sheet of paper in a 
conspicuous position, and announce that you will 
print upon it the name of every one that brings in a 
new scholar. A red paper star after the name signi- 
fies one new scholar, a blue star a second scholar, 
and so on. A similar roll may be used to honor 
perfect attendance, stars of different colors being 
used for the different quarters. 

Gold and Silver Stars.— There are well-based ob- 
jections to any distinction of one class above another, 
but a plan that will be found very valuable, at least 
as a temporary stimulus, is this : Honor with a large 
silver star every class that has all its members present, 
and with a gold star each class that reports all its 
282 



From a Superintendent's Notebook 

members bringing Bibles, and that all have studied 
the lesson at least twenty minutes. 

An Asterisk. — If by banners or in other ways you 
honor regular attendance, there will be a tendency to 
drop absent scholars from the rolls too quickly, be- 
cause they lower the standard of their classes. An 
excellent way of getting around this difficulty is to 
"star" the name of every scholar that has been 
absent a month. This asterisk means that the name 
is not to be counted in making up the report, but the 
presence of the name on the list means that the scholar 
is not to be forgotten or neglected. 

To Console Him. — One bright superintendent 
scorns to give a reward or prize for new scholars, 
but presents a nice leather-bound Bible, by way of 
compensation, to each scholar that for any cause is 
luckless enough to leave his school! 

A Spur. — Enforce punctuality by a large placard 
hung in front of the school, and reading, "You 
are early." When the school opens the card is 
turned, and now reads, in staring letters, "You are 
late!" 

A Question Drill. — This is a good plan for teachers' 
meetings. The teachers should ask questions on each 
verse, turn about, and the leader should criticise the 
questions. 

Teachers' -Meeting Roll- Call. — To insure previous 

study of the lesson, and to accustom the teachers to 

take part in the meeting, let the roll be called every 

week, and require each teacher to respond with some 

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Sunday-School Success 

thought concerning the lesson, usually a comment on 
some particular verse. 

Attendance on the Teachers' Meeting. — It will prove 
a helpful spur if this attendance is recorded regularly, 
and incorporated in all the reports made by the 
secretary to the school. 

Union Teachers' Meetings. — If you cannot have a 
teachers' meeting for your Sunday-school alone, be- 
cause you have no good leader, you can probably find 
a good leader in some neighboring church, and can 
give him and yourselves the stimulus of a large union 
gathering. This plan has many advantages, notably 
the opportunity for the comparison of methods. It 
has one great disadvantage : the work cannot apply 
so particularly to your individual school. 

A Reception Class.— New scholars may all be 
placed in a "reception class," until their ability, 
knowledge, and character can be learned. 

A Visitors' Register. — This is for the names and 
home addresses of all visitors. The little attention 
required to obtain these autographs pleases them and 
their friends, and breaks the ice for further acquain- 
tance. The register should be kept open on some table 
in a central spot, with pen and ink always at hand. 

An Address-Book. — This should contain, under 
proper and convenient classifications, the addresses 
of all scholars, teachers, and officers, past and present. 
It should always be kept in the church, and many 
will be the references to it. 

A Cradle Roll.— This contains the names of the 
284 



From a Superintendent's Notebook 

babies of the church, for each of whom his mother is 
given a certificate of membership. This roll is read 
once in a while before the primary class. 

Individual Histories. — At least one school has 
enough personal interest in its scholars to keep a 
history of each, in a book properly arranged for that 
purpose. This history includes the date of the 
scholar's joining the school and of his promotion to 
the various higher departments thereof, his birthday 
and the names of his parents, their church-member- 
ship, where the scholar lived when he joined the 
church, whom he married and when, his business, the 
date of his removal and the city to which he went, 
together with other and special facts. 

District Reporters. — Appoint one scholar or teacher 
to watch each street in town,— preferably, of course, 
the street on which he resides, — and report promptly 
all newcomers, that they may be invited to the 
Sunday-school. 

The Opening Prayer. — Let the ushers admit no one 
till it is over. Do not begin, or permit any one else 
to begin this prayer, till every head is bowed. Do 
not ask any one to offer this prayer without giving 
long notice ; no haphazard prayer will answer. 

Their Own Bibles.— A Bible in the hands of every 
scholar, — this alone makes possible variety and zest 
in the opening of the school. 

Lesson Introductions. — In small schools it has often 
been found profitable for the superintendent to spend 
ten or fifteen minutes teaching to the entire school 
285 



Sunday-School Success 

(with the exception of the primary department) the 
historical and similar details of the lesson. The 
teachers then add the lesson truths, teaching their 
individual classes. 

Varying Programmes. — If the opening exercises of 
the school get into a rut, it is hard for the teachers 
to lift the school out of it. Some wise superintendents 
plan these exercises for weeks ahead, keeping careful 
record, and thus avoid monotony. 

An Impressive Close. — One school closes its service 
with the Lord's Prayer, repeated by all as they stand. 
Then the school is seated, and waits in silence while 
the ushers, walking slowly up the aisles, dismiss each 
class in turn. 

A Closing Prayer. — Here is a beautiful prayer to 
be repeated in concert at the close of school : " May 
the light of thy Word, O Lord, dwell in us richly, 
and guide us day by day. Amen." 

Scripture in Closing. — To incite to Scripture memo- 
rizing, close the school with Bible verses repeated by 
all the scholars. Let each class in turn select the 
subject, such as " temperance," " obedience," " love," 
and announce it a week in advance. 

The Teachers before the School. — Now and then 
ask some teacher to say a few words to the entire 
school at the close of the session, summing up the 
most important teachings of the hour. This gives 
the whole school a bit of inspiration from each teacher 
in turn, and gives to each teacher the inspiration of 
talking to the whole school. 
286 



Chapter XLIV 
From a Teacher's Notebook 

Birthday Letters. — Little children will prize highly 
a cordial, loving letter written to them by their teacher 
on their birthday. Doubtless the very oldest scholars 
in the school will prize such a letter as much, if not 
even more. There should be no preachment in these 
letters, no hitting at peculiar sins ; just fill them with 
Christian sunshine. A birthday prayer in the class, 
short, simple, earnest, will clinch to the scholar the 
lessons of the day. 

Class Letters. — When the teacher is away on a 
vacation or for other reasons, a letter sent each week 
to some member of the class, taking the scholars in 
order, will be shared with the other scholars, and will 
strengthen the bond that the absence might have 
weakened or broken. 

Teachi?ig by Correspondence.— When the teacher 

must be absent, if she cannot find a good substitute, 

and the class is of a suitable age for the plan, let her 

send a letter containing a few thoughts on the lesson, 

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Sunday-School Success 

together with many questions, which the class are to 
discuss, and for which, after joint consultation, they 
will prepare written answers, to be sent to the teacher. 

The Lesson Message.— Do you fear that the central 
truth of the lesson may not be impressed on your 
class, either through your forgetfulness or because 
you lack time? Then write out for each scholar a 
sentence or two of exhortation, with a request that he 
read a certain appropriate passage of the Bible. Place 
these messages in envelopes, and distribute them at 
the close of the lesson. 

A Teacher's Loan. — If you have found a book that 
would be especially helpful to your class, by all means, 
if you can afford it, buy a copy, circulate it among 
the class, and, after all your scholars have read it, 
present it to the library. 

Birthdays of the Great.— Utilize in your teaching 
not only Washington's birthday and Lincoln's, but 
the birthday of any great man whose life may help to 
point the moral of the day's lesson. For this purpose, 
one of the many " birthday-books " is of value for 
reference. 

A Magazine Club.— The members of a Sunday- 
school class have similar interests, and an ideal maga- 
zine and paper club may be organized among them. 
Incidentally, it will enable the teacher to direct much 
of their reading. The periodicals subscribed for are 
to be passed around in a specified order, kept at each 
house a definite time, and each finally retained by 
some member of the class. 
288 



From a Teacher's Notebook 

Class Names. — It will prove an inspiration to any- 
class to have a good name, such as " Earnest Seekers," 
" Willing Workers," " The Joshua Band," " Daughters 
of Ruth." 

Five-Minute Preludes.— -Brief preludes on current 
topics or practically helpful points connected with the 
lesson theme may be found valuable in the Bible 
class, just as similar preludes have proved useful in 
the preaching service. 

Ifidependence . — Occasionally request the class to 
prepare so thoroughly that they can leave at home 
the quarterly, lesson leaf, even the Bible itself. The 
teacher also will do this ; and if he improves his op- 
portunity, this thorough storing of the mind may 
result in a recitation so delightful that the class will 
adopt the plan enthusiastically for the future. 

Her "Funny Box"—h teacher tells how she 
lightened the occasional sickness of her scholars by 
carrying to them what they called her " funny box," 
which held fruit and flowers, with scores of merry 
jokes clipped from the papers, peanuts marked with 
comical faces, and a Bible verse or two on the inside 
of the cover. 

A Review Picture- Gallery. — If you have been using 
the blackboard during the quarter, try a blackboard 
review. Draw twelve picture-frames, and call up the 
scholars one by one, asking each to fill in one of the 
frames with what he remembers of the blackboard 
work of that lesson. It may be necessary for the 
teacher to remind the scholar what the design was, 
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Sunday-School Success 

and to help him draw it, or the entire class may be 
asked to give this assistance. 

An Essay Review. — Divide the lessons of the 
quarter among your scholars, so that each will write 
an essay on some one lesson ; or, if your class is too 
small for that, assign two lessons apiece to some of 
the scholars. Limit them as to time, but let each 
choose his line of treatment. 

Silent Prayers.— -If we always word the children's 
prayers for them, they will be unlikely ever to word 
prayers for themselves. Often request them to bow 
their heads and in silence to ask the Father for what 
they need and thank him for his kindness. 

Class Prayers.— Why should not every class recita- 
tion be opened with a brief prayer, and often close 
with one? Yes, and when the talk in the middle of 
the lesson becomes especially earnest, prayer is the 
best means of binding the truth to the lives of your 
scholars. 

A Prayer Calendar.— This is a list of the scholars 
in your class, plus the name of the teacher, divided 
among the days of the week, that of the teacher falling 
on Sunday. The whole is headed with a promise to 
pray each day for the persons named for that day. 
Each of the scholars has a copy, and signs it. 

Pegs. — Draw a good-sized map of the country you 
are studying, and mount it on a board. With a 
gimlet bore holes wherever there is an important 
town, mountain, lake, or other geographical feature 
whose location you wish your scholars to learn. Fit 
290 



From a Teacher's Notebook 

pegs into these holes, and color the pegs white for 
the mountains, red for the cities, blue for the bodies 
of water. Teach the scholars, as you call for Hebron, 
for instance, to place a red peg in the proper hole, 
and thus to use the map. 

Dissected Maps. — Paste a good-sized map of the 
desired country on thick cardboard or pasteboard. 
If you cannot get a large enough map, draw one 
yourself, and in the process you will learn much 
geography. Then cut the map into irregular pieces, 
and present it to the younger classes for them to fit 
together. 

Putty Maps. — With a board foundation and a good 
map for a guide, any teacher can build up a relief 
map of Palestine out of putty. Paint the water blue, 
the sandy portions yellow, the fertile plains green, 
the mountains white or gray, the cities red. Letter 
with black. 

Colors and Places. — A good way to aid the chil- 
dren's memory as to the location of the various lessons 
of the quarter is to write on the blackboard the title 
of each lesson as it comes, using each week a different 
color, and pinning to an outline map, at the same time, 
a scrap of paper of the same color. Of course, if a 
later lesson falls at the same place, the old color will 
be used in writing its title. 

Home Drawings. — Some teachers wisely require 

their scholars to reproduce at home what they can 

remember of the blackboard work of the day, and 

bring in the result the next Sunday. The test is one 

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Sunday-School Success 

for the teacher's blackboard work as well as for the 
scholars' memory. 

Utilizing your Reading. — Every teacher should 
keep either a wide-margin Bible, or an interleaved 
Bible, solely to note the helps on Bible texts he may 
note in his reading. If the book or periodical is 
your own, simply set down the page opposite the 
Bible verse. Some may prefer a system of envelopes, 
one for each book of the Bible, in which clippings 
may be filed, as well as slips of paper containing 
references to books. 

One Way of Preparing. — Cut up the Scripture text 
found on a lesson leaf, and paste the verses on large 
sheets of paper, leaving liberal space around each. 
In this space write your own comments, and the sug- 
gestions you glean from your reading. 

On the Spot. — If one of your scholars is reported 
sick, why not pen — ox pencil — a little note immedi- 
ately, with the aid of the class, and send it to the 
sick scholar at the close of the school? A message 
thus written will move graciously upon the class as 
well as upon the recipient. 

Prompt Investigation. — "A stitch in time saves 
nine." Apply this maxim to your scholar's first 
absence, and look him up at once. 

Lookout Committees. — Divide each class into three 
companies. Company A will seek recruits for the 
class, Company B will hunt up absentees, and Com- 
pany C will do hospital service among the sick. 
Require regular reports. 

292 



From a Teacher's Notebook 

Reports of Study.— Some teachers issue to their 
scholars blank reports, which they return, filled out, 
each Sunday. These reports tell whether they have 
studied the lesson for ten minutes each day, and what 
verses of the lesson they do not understand. 

Reports to Parents.— The work done in Sunday- 
school should be so definite that it can be reported. 
Certain points should be required to be learned in 
each lesson, and when they are well recited, or when 
they are not recited, the parents should know of it. 
Regular monthly or quarterly reports, sent by postal- 
card, will stimulate the scholar to learn better, the 
parents to help him study, and the teacher to teach 
with system, definiteness, and persistency. 

Collection and Record. — Give the mother, for her 
child, fifty-two little envelopes in which to put a 
year's pennies or nickels. Each child's envelopes 
are given a number, so that the collection is also a 
record of attendance. 

More than a Straight Mark.— A simple but com- 
plete record may be made by a few strokes of the 
pencil. A cross has been suggested. The upper arm 
signifies "present"; the lower arm, "prompt"; the 
left-hand arm, "the lesson learned," according to a 
definite standard; the right-hand arm, "present at 
church." If the scholar has failed in one or more of 
these points, the corresponding arms are omitted from 
the cross. 

Class Photographs.— With your own camera or 
some friend's take a group picture of your class once 
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Sunday-School Success 

a year. You may give them at that time a pleasant 
" photograph party," or take an excursion together to 
some place, there to be photographed. Each scholar 
should have a copy of the resulting picture. It will 
be delightful if all the classes can thus be photo- 
graphed, and an exhibition arranged of the entire 
series of pictures, which then becomes the property 
of the school. 

Holidays Together.— A teacher especially success- 
ful in holding together a class of boys is in the habit 
of taking them with him on all sorts of excursions, — 
to libraries, museums, points of historical interest, on 
sleigh-rides, to hear illustrated lectures. And often 
he arranges for them merry parties at his home. 

A Class Symbol. — Some concrete token, presented 
when the new scholar joins the class, will greatly help 
to cement the relationship. This may be a little 
book, a ribbon book-mark, an illuminated Scripture 
card, a simple emblematic pin. Whatever it is, it 
should be the same for all, that it may serve as a sort 
of class badge. 

Introduction Cards. — These are of use to make new 
scholars acquainted with their classmates. The card 
contains the names of Sunday-school, teacher, and 
all the scholars, that of the new scholar being last, 
with the date of entrance. The whole is of immediate 
service to the new member, and is sure to be preserved 
as a pleasant memento. 

A Work for Each. — Enlist each of your scholars 
in some definite and individual work for Christ. One 
294 



From a Teacher's Notebook 

may gather up old periodicals for the seamen, one 
may be interested" in a children's hospital, one may 
collect partly worn garments for the poor. At each 
meeting of the class call for brief reports of these 
special lines of work. There could be no better 
commentary on the lessons your scholars are studying. 

Substitute Teachers. — The teachers should obtain 
their own substitutes, whenever possible. If the 
superintendent makes it clear that he expects this, it 
will usually be done. In the process of obtaining the 
substitute, too, the teacher will probably gain fresh 
sympathy and consideration for the superintendent. 

A Class Historian. — Appoint one scholar to this 
office. Ask him to keep track of the old members, 
and report any interesting news concerning them, at 
the same time keeping a record. 

Essays. — Your scholars will appreciate the honor 
if asked to prepare essays now and then on special 
points in the lessons, such as " Jewish customs re- 
garding Sunday," "The city of Antioch," "What the 
Bible teaches about temperance." Such essays 
should be very brief. 

Supplemental Lessons. — The very interest aroused 
by the International Lessons calls often for supple- 
mentary lessons, dealing with such topics as the origin 
of the Bible, Bible geography, the Christian doctrines. 
Ten minutes preceding the regular lesson may be 
spent on such themes, and a great deal thus learned 
in the course of the year. 

An Expedient.— -If a boy is especially mischievous 
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Sunday-School Success 

and restless, make him an usher and set him to keep- 
ing the rest in order. 

A Study Outline. — Each member of a certain class 
was furnished with a copy of the following excellent 
programme for home study of the lesson : " i. Inter- 
vening events. 2. Time. 3. Place. 4. Persons. 
5. Incidents. 6. Parallel passages and Scripture 
references. 7. Difficulties. 8. Doctrines and duties. 
9. Central thought. 10. Personal application— to 
myself, to others." 

Question-Books. — Blank-books in which questions 
on the lesson have been written, with spaces for 
answers, may profitably be used even in very young 
classes. The answers should be written immediately 
on the conclusion of the teaching, or even, question 
by question, as the teaching proceeds. In older 
classes, the questions may be set before the class a 
week later, and may introduce the next lesson, by 
way of review. 

Home-Made Question- Books.— To induce your 
scholars to study at home, provide for each of them 
two little blank-books. Write a question in one, and 
request the return of the book next Sunday with the 
answer written out. Exchange it for the second 
book, and so alternate. Wise teachers will slip into 
such books many a personal word of praise or exhor- 
tation. 

A Question Formula. — Ask each member of the 
class to bring you, every Sunday, written answers to 
a set of questions so general that, once dictated, they 
296 



From a Teacher's Notebook 

will serve for all lessons ; for instance : " When oc- 
curred the events of our lesson? What is a brief 
synopsis of our lesson? What is its principal teach- 
ing? Which is your favorite verse in it, and why? " 
These answers should be discussed in the class. 

Trained as Questioners. — In most schools there is 
no normal class, and if the teachers do not train their 
scholars to teach, the next generation of teachers in 
that school will be untrained. The class should be 
taught how to ask questions, and probably the best 
way to do this is to have them occupy a few minutes 
at the beginning of each recitation questioning one 
another on the previous lesson. 

A Choice of Questions. — For this exercise the 
teacher writes a number of questions, which she 
brings to the class. Each scholar in turn is permitted 
to select a question, which he will propound to any 
of his classmates he may pick out. 

The "Bible Library." — This is a help to learning 
the order of the books of the Bible, and consists ot 
sixty-six wooden blocks, painted and lettered to repre- 
sent books, and varying in thickness with the size of 
the various books of the Bible. The poetical books 
are " bound " in the same style, the minor prophets 
in a different style, and so with other " sets." These 
imitation books are kept on shelves, from which they 
are taken by the children, to be replaced in the cor- 
rect order. 

Bible- Reading Lessons.— Many scholars read the 
Bible wretchedly ; they have never been taught how. 
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Sunday-School Success 

If this is the case with your class, have them read the 
lesson, verse about, before you discuss it. After the 
reading, criticise it, and have them repeat it. 

Two Bibles.— -If the scholars will not bring their 
Bibles to school, — and the boys especially are likely 
to think it will look " goody-goody," — the next best 
plan is to give each of them a second Bible for his 
own use during the school hour. 

Marked Bibles. — Teach the scholars to mark their 
Bibles, writing, for instance, the " key- word " at the 
beginning of each book; underscoring the leading 
sentence of a chapter ; marking with red all passages 
referring to Christ as our Saviour ; writing a P after 
every promise; "railroading," or connecting with a 
neatly drawn line, phrases that are antithetical or 
mutually explanatory, etc. One set of colored inks 
will answer for the class. The scholars will delight 
in the work, it will induce them to bring their Bibles 
to school, and will teach them how to use the Book. 

Bible Dialogues. — Where the lesson text includes 
conversation, get the scholars to read it in dialogue 
form, or to come with it thus written out. 

Home Bible-Readi?ig. — The school may be set to 
reading the Bible at home, if lists of readings for each 
day of the week are written on cards by the teachers, 
and given out, to be returned, signed, in token that 
the reading has been accomplished. 

A Divided Primary Department. — In large schools, 
where the superintendent of the primary department 
teaches the lesson for ten or fifteen minutes, and then 



From a Teacher's Notebook 

hands the classes over to her assistant teachers, it is 
best for those teachers to spend their time in eliciting 
from the children, by questions, the facts and truths 
just taught them. Thus you will make sure of some- 
thing gained. 

A Week-Day Meeting. — It has been proved possible 
to sustain, in connection with a primary department, 
a week-day meeting for special and supplementary 
teaching, including singing, mission studies, and Bible 
history and geography. 

Introducing Prayer. — This little verse, recited in 
concert, is used in many primary departments just 
before the prayer service : 

" We fold our hands that we may be 
From all our work and play set free ; 
We close our eyes that we may see 
Nothing to take our thoughts from thee; 
We bow our heads as we draw near 
The King of kings, our Father dear." 

The Essentials.— Every child, before leaving the 
primary department, should know the Command- 
ments, the Beatitudes, the Twenty-third Psalm, the 
Apostles' Creed or some simple statement of Christian 
faith, the books of the Bible by name and order and 
something of their origin, the principal features of the 
map of Palestine, the chief events in Christ's life. 
Some of the Old Testament history will of course be 
added, — creation, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, 
David, Solomon. 

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Sunday-School Success 

Primary Prayers. — No prayer for the children is so 
good as prayer by the children. Ask them, one after 
the other, to name things for which they are grateful. 
Then give them the formula, "I thank thee, Lord, 
for . . . ," and let them offer prayers of thanksgiving 
for what they have mentioned. Again, ask each to 
tell one thing he really wants, and follow with prayers 
of petition, with the formulas, " Help me, dear Jesus, 
to be . . . ," or, " Give me, dear Jesus, . . . ." 
Teach short Bible prayers. Offer longer prayers in 
brief sentences, which the children reverently repeat 
after you. For example : " Our dear heavenly 
Father, ... we thank thee for this beautiful day, 
... for our homes and fathers and mothers, . . . 
for our sisters and brothers and friends, . . . and all 
that thou hast given us to make life happy. . . . 
Teach us to be helpful to those that are without these 
blessings. . . . Make us more kind and patient. . . . 
Help us to do everything thou dost want us to do. 
. . . For Jesus' sake. Amen." 



300 

LBS '3! 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1t 



